climbed up onto the roof of the cab, out of the dust and into the wind, but my sickness was coming on nicely and I couldn't lift my head to look at the Himalayan postcards we were driving through.In the middle of the night we spent a few hours at a rough tent city of restaurants and army officers who ordered us off the truck, took our passports and took away one of the drivers to beat him up. They questioned us individually about how much money we'd paid, shook their heads grimly and laboriously wrote out every detail of every page of every passport.


 was on the verge of fainting, and after spilling my guts in a couple of distasteful ways, I went and lay in the truck on my bed of potatoes and twisted metal. We started moving again. The truck was as wide as the road in many places, but we kept not dying, which was as much as I was asking for. As we crossed the last pass before the final descent into Manali it rained and then snowed. I lay back shivering on my pointy, poky bed and communed with my churning innards.


t a particularly lurching part of the journey, I could hold out no longer. I balanced on the truck frame and aimed my arse towards a biscuit box. I hoped everyone was asleep, I hoped I wouldn't fall off the truck, I hoped my aim was true (it wasn't - and I cursed myself feebly for refusing to buy the overpriced toilet paper at the last stop). Vomiting over the side was a breeze after this.












back





next