The next few days were spent wandering the city by day and watching Octopussy by night on my sociable but windy, roof terrace. Having bargained with the owner that if i stayed 7 nights instead of my original 5 he would knock the rent down. Being a victim of my own tightness i I stayed on thr extra 2 nights, enduring, unnessicerily, another two nights in the sweat box and my soaking shrowd.
On my last full day I booked a bus to Jodhpur (Rajasthan being reasonably well served with 'luxury' tourist busses i decided to give the trains a rest), and was surprised to be offered the option of sleeper on what I presumed would be a standard coach.
As I boarded the bus it had a very strange layout. The right hand side was set out like a sleeper bus with two teirs of bunks runing the length of the bus, the left hand side was seating although those every ingenious Indians had squezed another sleeping birth above the seats, giving for a clostrophobically low ceiling for those in the seats. The bus appeared to be overbooked, a fact which seemed to please the conductor as he pocketed the extra fares, at the expense of the personal space of the passengers (something which is not respected). As we were heading closer to the Thar desert the scenery was mainly of flat scrubland and the hot winds battered the bus. Regardless i had my window fully open and was hanging my right arm if not for the breeze then for the extra bit of space it granted me, this was something I was to very soon regret.
The Indians have a ponchant for chewing betel nut, and despite the fact it turns their mouths a blood red and rots their teeth it is as popular now as it was hundreds years ago when it first started. The main problem, not only on a personal level but as of late when it was banned by the government, is the spitting of the bright red excess juices (you may see where this story is going). So as I gleefully hung my arm out the window I was completely unawares to the betel chewing going on in the sleeper birth above, that was until I heard the all to familiar 'Wild Western pontoonesque' spitting noise and the sudden wet feeling on my arm. As I hastily withdrew my arm the red ooze stared to trickle towards my elbow, not knowing wether to express my disgust or retaliate with something equally as nasty I did neither and tried my best to clean myself up with my sleeping neighbours newspaper. After 5 minutes of applying that most nessecary of items, the pocket size hand sanatizer, i felt a little cleaner although the smell lingered on, I closed my window and now realised why people tend to do this, only opening them to spit out of.
With nothing left to do but sit there and hope for jodhpur I closed my eyes and hoped for my iminent, uneventful, arrival.
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