Excerpt from Mefloquine Dreams - copyright 2004 by Chris Farrell

The next morning we woke to pea soup-like fog and an iciness in our room that crystallized our breath the instant it left our mouths. Probably a good day to forego the cold shower factor. Unfortunately, part of my scalp treatment was to soak my head in this tar oil crap overnight which meant that I had to get that shit off first thing in the morning. I really had no choice in the matter; the only beam of light for me was the sole closet-sized shared shower downstairs that was supposed to have hot water in the mornings. But as I stood there naked and shivering just outside the stream of ice cold water with my breath visibly puffing out in front of me and oil dripping down my neck, I realized that it was only a pipe dream. This was not a good start to the day.

Our goal for the afternoon was probably surprisingly not the Taj Mahal; instead we decided to forgo the Taj while the fog was too thick to see further than twenty yards, and check out the highly heralded Agra Fort. Seeing as we had the full day to explore, we shirked the rickshaw touts waiting in front of our lodge ("But sir! I have been waiting here for you to be your special guide? Why not you take me…?"), and navigated the disgustingly dirty and rotting streets around town. I love this part. We thoroughly enjoyed the unique freaky people going about their daily businesses and the heaped piles of smoldering garbage rotting in the gutters.

As we were walking along a grassy part of the road, we slowly came upon a road crew building a brick retaining wall along one side. As the guys worked the bricks into the wall, lining them with concrete, a lady, fully dressed in a colorful sari from head to toe, stacked the bricks and lugged piles of them to the guys as their stash grew smaller. Intrigued, Paige whipped our camera and asked the girl for permission to take her picture. The girl nodded shyly. But the second that camera clicked, four guys came running over in a panic shouting.

"NONONO! You must pay fee!"

OK, whatever, only, there was no way we were paying it to these guys, it was going to the girl. Paige handed her a few rupees, she smiled happily and embarrassingly, and instantly the guys were on her to divvy up the cash.

The Agra Fort was a total surprise. Believing that it had to be a distant second to the innate amazingness of the Taj, we went into it halfheartedly, thinking that it was probably a sorry tourist trap. Nope. This place was absolutely beautiful and incredibly interesting. Enormous in its grandeur, its extensive construction and detailed artisan work blew us away. Manicured gardens and lawns, huge courtyards with gigantic pillars and rolling stairs, and a setting right there overlooking the river. Supposedly we should be able to see the Taj from the walls of the Fort, but with the fog and thick pollution commingling, visibility was a whopping 200 meters at the height of the afternoon. No dice.

It had been a full morning/afternoon of hearty tourism, so on the way back as we wound through herds of goats crossing through busy intersections, we stopped off at a disgusting hole-in-the-wall "liquor shop" where we picked up four warm beers to put away back at the lodge. Relaxing in our hotel’s restaurant, we put away those nasty beers ("I.Q." was the brand, and the stated alcohol content was "between 5.0 and 8.8%," which should give you an excellent idea of the "quality" of the product: shit) along with a mound of roasted peanuts I’d bought from a street vendor as we yapped with an Irish traveler from Japan. Make sense? Good, please try to stay with me here.

We’d been spending tons of time plodding through our new Lonely Planet India, not only reading about the culture, food, history and festivals, but also tentatively picking out the places we want to hit. In the Agra section, we couldn’t help but see the absolutely shining recommendation for a restaurant somewhat nearby that pretty much "catered to tourists." Our initial reaction was to totally avoid the place, as we were ideally looking for less touristy places and more authentic Indian restaurants. But after our repulsive beers and their questionable alcohol content hit our bloodstreams, we decided to eat our pride and head out for a good meal surrounded by white, western tourists.

Maintaining the day’s fogginess, the streets were still in full thick soup regalia as we slipped through the darkness towards the restaurant. Inside, there wasn’t a single Indian dining with us, only tourists which we hadn’t really seen any of since we’d arrived. Guess they’d all been hanging out here. The food was OK, definitely not "phenomenal," but their spiced chai was good and the place was clean. That can be a stretch around here. But don’t get bored yet, the story is just beginning.

Oily head application intact, we called it a night and drifted off in our icy room as the fog permeated the cracks in our walls. Then, at 3:30 AM I suddenly woke up feeling incredibly nauseous and dizzy, poison coursing through my veins and heart beating furiously. It was all I could do but run to our attached bathroom (really just a dirty annex to the room with a toilet and a shower head) before I violently vomited up our tourist meal. As I retched in forceful agony, I couldn’t help but be tickled pink that we had only been eating vegetarian. I couldn’t even imagine the scare that it would have given me if I thought I had contracted some wormy, parasitic disease from questionable meat preparation. This episode only solidified our quest to stay veggie while in India.

I returned to my mummy bag with sweat beaded up on my forehead and my throat burning in pain. The intenseness of the moment sent me back off into sleep in a matter of minutes, but when we awoke around 7 AM the following morning, my throat felt like I had ruptured or torn my esophagus in the violentness of the vomiting. It was so painful and uncomfortable, I couldn’t even swallow without moaning in pain. I began to silently freak.

We had to play it safe, so Paige grabbed the hotel manager and had him recommend a doctor nearby that we could visit. He explained that we definitely should not go to the hospital, as there had been a string of cases lately where tourists had been poisoned and taken to the hospital where they incurred ridiculously large medical bills and the doctors would kick back some of that money to the restaurant/person who poisoned them. This seemed a little sensationalistic to me, I mean, other than the burning rupture in my esophagus, the food poisoning aspect seemed to have fully passed with the extrication of the bad food. But since it was no skin off our back, we decided to check out this recommended doctor first and take it from there.

We bundled up and trudged a couple blocks down the street to a "out-of-home" doctor who worked out of her apartment and only accepted payment in cash rupees. We climbed the stairs to her door, knocked, and were greeted by a little old lady dressed in a pink sari who quickly waved us in. As our eyes got adjusted to the unlit room, we began to get somewhat familiar with the surroundings: two rooms, one obviously her living quarters and the other her examination room, dirty and grimy as a college bathroom shared by a group of guys, cold and extremely uninviting. I shivered.

"Do you speak English?"I hoarsely began.

"Yes of course," she replied with that thick Indian accent.

"Last night I must have gotten food poisoning because I woke up in the middle of the night and vomited really violently. In fact, I vomited so violently that I think that I might have torn or hurt my throat because I can’t even swallow anymore and it’s a constant, searing pain. I am NOT vomiting anymore, so the reason I’m seeing you is NOT food poisoning. That has pretty much completely passed and my stomach feels much better now. It’s my throat. I think I have seriously injured my throat." I was trying to make sure she stayed on target…

The lady, having listened intently throughout my soliloquy, squinted pensively and remained inanimate for a good twenty silent seconds. Paige and I waited in baited anticipation. Suddenly, as if she had just received a message direct from Lord Siva himself, she took a deep breath, raised her finger in the air, and, as if decreeing one of the ten commandments, shouted her diagnosis.
"YOUR PROBLEM IS VOMITING!"

The entertainment factor of this visit alone was worth the 100 rupee fee. It was a little disturbing that she immediately prescribed antibiotics (without looking down my throat, taking my temperature or touching or looking at me at all), but after the climax of her diagnosis, I was past listening to her anyway. But I tried one final time to explain to her that my problem, believe it or not, was NOT vomiting, it was my throat.

"Your throat is just fine," she decreed.

OK. I guess that’s what you get for a $2.50 doctor visit. I stared at her in disbelief. Here was this "doctor" who was telling her patient that their pain was not pain and their lack of vomiting was in fact vomiting. She sensed my frustration.

"What, you don’t believe me? Here," she grabbed Paige’s arm, "you see for yourself." She grabbed an old flashlight on its last legs whose batteries were dim and nearly dead. The light made a slight change on the darkness of the wall. But Paige declined. Undaunted, the lady scoffed and started screaming in Hindu across the hall. Soon, a guy walked into her apartment.

"If you won’t look," she said to Paige, "he’ll tell you it’s OK."

Wow. So when the patient's wife won’t make a diagnosis for the doctor, the doctor recruits some random guy living next door to judge for himself. Is everyone taking notes? t least we found the whole thing funny enough to make me feel somewhat better. I declined the antibiotics but took a couple packets of gargle medicine she found in the recesses of her apartment. It was looking like I was going to have to wait this thing out on my own.

Back to our cold bedroom where I slept and rested over the rest of the morning and most of the early afternoon while Paige read. The only problem was that this was our final day in Agra as we had already purchased that whole first round of train tickets back in Delhi and had no way to change them. Besides, we really didn’t want to stay another day here; if I could somehow muster up the strength to get out of bed and drag myself over to the Taj Mahal, we could leave with our goals intact.

By 2:00, I believed I could handle some tourism and pulled on my Greek jeans and Turkish sweater and joined Paige out on the street where we quickly and faultlessly hailed a bicycle rickshaw. My throat was thankfully improving; I could swallow with only minor wincing, but the vomiting and lack of any food since had made me weak and slightly dizzy. We’d have to take it easy.

Our half hour ride out to the Taj was highly enjoyable, passively experiencing the street scenes as we slowly wound around town. It was undoubtedly the best 12 cents we’d ever spent in our lives. Five rupees for this guy to work his butt off pedaling us around town for thirty minutes! We slapped him a nice tip, thanked him for being honest in quoting us the price, and hopped off the rickshaw in front of the main gate.

The Taj Mahal is so incredibly important to Agra, they have blocked off all streets within a one kilometer radius so that pollution will have less of an effect on the deterioration of the Taj. Unfortunately, it’s far from enough. Agra is so polluted, the Taj appears foggy even across its own courtyard. And the pollution is apparently rapidly eating away at the Taj’s majesty; the government really needs to take some serious action.

It is an absolutely spectacular sight: breathtaking and awe-inspiring. We tried to soak it all in slowly, but I was feeling so weak and dizzy that we could only last about an hour before I was about ready to pass out. We’d walked all around and inside the Taj in our stocking feet, took pictures from just about every angle, and fended off throngs of touts…I was exhausted.

We emerged back outside of the gate and walked off a ways in order to get the less touristy rickshaws (and hopefully some close-to-honest prices), and quickly grabbed another bike rickshaw guy. In between pedaling furiously, he kept turning around to coast and insist that we should go visit some of these shops that he knew about RIGHT NOW! Somehow, we were able to keep him on the straight and narrow, and it probably helped when we finally told him, "If you take us anywhere but our hotel, not only will you NOT get a single rupee, but we will report you to the police." He was a peach after that.

Upon arrival at our hotel, we paid him 5 rupees for the ride and 5 rupees for not taking us to any tourist shops. "We’re giving you this extra five rupees to let you know that tourists don’t like to go to those places. Stop taking them there against their will!" I’m not saying that he got the point, but maybe, just maybe next time he will ask instead of insisting annoyingly. Boy, I’m a dreamer.

I felt much better as the night wound up and the oil was coating my pitiful scalp again. Only a few more days of this nonsense. At least it seemed to be working. Oil through the night, then washing it with this fluorescent pink prescription shampoo, then a chimp-like application of these burning drops that Paige had to strategically drip throughout my scalp. What the hell was going on with my body? In an inexplicable way, we sensed impending doom as we drifted off to sleep that night…

Wake up call was at 4 AM, as our train was scheduled to depart at 5, and we’d forgotten to ask a rickshaw guy to meet us out front at this ungodly hour of the morning. The day began appropriately with my ice cold shower at 4:05 in the morning in the 30 degree weather. Yi. Shivering in freezing pain, we packed up, strapped on and were out in the pea soup, foggy, pitch black darkness by 4:30. I have to admit that we half expected to be able to catch one of the usually swarming rickshaw touts, even at this time of the night, although the thought had crossed our minds that we may have made a big mistake by not reserving one the day before.

We walked down the dead silent street in pure isolation. Not a soul about. This was not a good sign, and the train station was not exactly close by. If we had to walk in this iciness, it would easily take us an hour to get there. We picked up the pace in a dual attempt to hurry and get the blood flowing, but the oncoming depression of us missing the train was weighing heavily on our heads. This sucked. In the cold, silent waning hours of night with all sounds muted by the thick fog, reality was surreal and our emotions were infinitely amplified. If we saw a single headlight in any direction, we were prepared to run full speed to stop whatever vehicle it was attached to and bribe a ride to the station. Soon we were already a kilometer away from our hotel, and moving further in the direction of where we thought the station to be by the minute. If we didn’t make this train and it was the only train of the day heading in our direction…well, that would just plain suck.

And then there it was: a single pitiful beam of a motor rickshaw puttering towards us from a few blocks away. We stood in the middle of the street and waved our arms, shouting at the guy to stop…and he did! But there were already four people inside.

"Please," I begged, in fully begging mode, "we have to make a train that’s leaving in five minutes, we’ll pay you forty rupees," knowing that the "real" price was far below this but the "tourist" price was far above it.

The driver was not amused. "There is no room. One hundred fifty rupees."

I had to give credit to the guy, he had us by the short hairs and we all knew it. But he obviously didn’t know who he was dealing with. We piled into the backseat with our packs and the two other passengers, crammed beyond belief, and when we were all tightly packed in and it was impossible to move anymore, I finally replied, "Fifty, and that’s as high as we’re going."

The driver looked at me incredulously, started up the motor and put the rickshaw into gear without another word. Cool. We whizzed along in the cold foggy darkness with the eerie smoky glows of the streetlights appearing out of nowhere in front of us and then disappearing behind us as we sped by. I looked at my watch: 4:57. We could still make it…

We pulled into the station’s parking lot and flew up to the door. I jammed fifty rupees into the driver’s hand, but he would not take it. "One hundred fifty, not fifty."

This was ridiculous. Now he decides to continue the negotiation? After we arrived at our destination and with fifty rupees still hanging around as the final discussed amount?

"Fifty was the last amount we discussed. Either you take fifty or you just gave us a free ride." I stuck the fifty rupee note back towards him and tried to stick it in his hands, but he kept them clenched in defiance. Regardless of my threat, I was not about to walk away without paying the guy anything, but we had exactly one minute to spare. I managed to work a corner of the note in between two of his fisted fingers and he had it.

"Let’s go," I said to Paige, pulling her away from the rickshaw and then breaking into a run towards the station’s door. There didn’t appear to be any shouts or Hindu curses following us, so we hoped that the situation was diffused; we had more important things to worry about.

But the 5 AM train was actually in no jeopardy of leaving at 5. Or 6. Or 7. 8, 9, or 10 am would have been fantastic, but instead were just a dirty little fantasy. Our rush to make the 5 AM train ended exactly nine hours later when we left Agra at 2 PM. The worst part about the whole thing (and believe me, this comes from a long list) was that the electronic board kept only indicating that the train would be an hour later than whatever time it currently was for the first six hours, then proceeded to take the train off the board entirely after that, freaking us out and making us believe that we were stuck indefinitely. The station manager, already fully tired of Paige and my inquiries and constant hounding, couldn’t take our anxiety when that train came off the board, so he put it back up and this time kept the departure time only 30 minutes from whatever time it currently was: a nightmare tactic. We were losing our minds.

But if we had just wanted to get from point A to point B we should have flown. The time and ensuing experiences were what we were in it for, and in the end we both had to admit that we’d never in our lives forget sitting on that disgusting train station bench huddled up in our sleeping bags in the bitter cold watching monkeys running through the rafters, dropping down right in front of a targeted "hit" (unsuspecting person) to scare them into dropping something (like a banana or a purse), and then grabbing it and running off to safety. Highly entertaining stuff! Although we felt bad for the people we were losing their wallets and personal baggage, this was better than the Jerry Springer Show.

We were absolutely freezing for most of the morning, wrapping ourselves up so tightly in our bags that only our mouths had access to the outside in strategically placed airholes where we could breathe. The station was dead at 5 AM, but packed to the gills with homeless, passengers and employees (vendors, etc.) sleeping in gigantic piles of people, cardboard and blankets. Hordes of stray mangy dogs endlessly tried to sneak onto the warmth of a hopefully unwatched blanket corner before being discovered and kicked away with a loud round of yelps and wailing. Sickly beggars coughed and spat phlegm endlessly to the enjoyment of nobody.

Then, as if by magic, the station transformed in an instant and suddenly became alive and totally buzzing with crowds and movement. We had the "typical" train station breakfast of bananas and pre-packaged fruit cake while shooing away the highly annoying and pitiless beggar children. I’d rather give money to the monkeys. (That shouldn’t be interpreted in the racist realm, only the financial one.) Walking around the station to get the blood flowing in our freezing limbs and check the newest status on the manipulating electronic board, we would trudge endlessly through enormous puddles of spat blood-red betel nut juice, in some areas so thick, old and festering that one of the train station employees had sprinkled either comet, baking power, baby powder or powdered sugar on top. Didn’t scrub it in or rub it off, just sprinkled it. Soon, even that was swimming in the bleeding loogies.

Even when the train finally pulled into the station (to the disbelief of everyone) and we were permitted to board, we still had another eight hours of travel ahead of us. This effectively, but appropriately, became compounded by a nightmare of a compartment neighbor. While he slept, he snored like he was ripping his throat (and our ears) to shreds, and while he was awake he chain smoked, sucked his teeth, coughed humid wetness on our faces, put his feet on us, hacked phlegm, and even sat on me…on purpose, while I was taking a nap on my bunk. No concept of personal space whatsoever. If we were ever even considering buying something to eat from one of the many station vendors throughout the afternoon and night, it was squashed forever when this guy waved a vendor over selling a bucket of fried whatever, and proceeded to palm and squeeze each and every one of the 20 or so pieces, some more than once, before finally choosing the one with the most amount of fat and grease. I don’t know what was worse: the fact that he did it, or the fact that the vendor acted like every customer did it and he couldn’t care less. Again, highly entertaining, in the most disturbing sort of way.

We could hardly contain our excitement and anticipation of a clean bed and pure privacy when the train pulled into the Jaipur station around 10 PM. We hopped off the train and shot out of there in about ten seconds flat, having decided to forgo all the rickshaw (and tout) hell to get a brief span of exercise and walk the 1-2 kilometers to our hotel. The touts could hardly believe what they were seeing: tourists not hiring a rickshaw? What was the world coming to?

As expected, we got turned around a few times out there in the dark, but were undaunted and determined, and soon arrived at our destination: the Aangan guesthouse around 10:30 PM. As we walked through the front gates and entered the outside dining area lit with candles and alive with the sublime buzz of conversation and cold Kingfisher beers, we could only hope that there was a room available.

"One room left," the manager told us. We could honestly care less what that thing looked like right then, but were pleasantly surprised with a queen sized bed and an attached bathroom. "You can move rooms tomorrow if you decide to stay longer," he told us, and we fell in love with this place. It was simply icing, and pure poetry, that the place still had the restaurant open that late at night and served beer.

I was famished and craving an ice cold beer after such an arduous day, but Paige was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. We grabbed a table in the grassy courtyard and within no time had two full glasses of sweet beer in front of us. No condensation however, it was cold enough outside to keep our beers the proper temperature all the way down, although definitely noticeably warmer than Agra. Perhaps as we continued south the weather would improve. I ordered up some dal, rice and chapatis, and scarfed on one of the single greatest and most basic meals of my life. We slept with smiles plastered on our exhausted faces.

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