The (tikka) dust settles

<p dir=ltr>Lying in bed for the best part of a week builds the potential energy to explosive levels. <br>
True, I've had a few excursions in to the Real World Out There, but dependent on either the combustion engine of some pimped-looking-noise-machine (scooter dressed as superbike) or an invariably skinny huffing and puffing rickshaw wallah; both options being unsatisfactory: the rickshaw making me squirm with unease and wanting me to help push sometimes, the scooter terrifying me in it's high-speed-helmetless-heavy-on-the-horn combo. <br>
But the oft dreamed of Open Road of India, powered by my own two legs, has been lying tantalisingly out of touch. <br>
My body recovering from hideous 'flu and a necessary bout of antibiotics has waylaid me, as has just the tiniest amount of fear. The body recovering just takes time; fear has to be run roughshod over as quickly as possible before it festers too much. The manifestations of the mind are mostly products of other people's imaginings projected on to one's own. Ignore as quickly as possible. <br>
So by Thursday morning I was bursting with the wholehearted desire to get on that road. Every little bit of practical preparation that I could have done, was. The "to do list", abandoned back in the UK, was now finished. A few extra bits conjured up whilst in Allahabad, were themselves complete. The Allahabad tasks were mini tests in themselves, little insights or lessons in to this bizarre wonder that is India: The confoundingly multi-stage process to get a SIM card to use my mobile phone (mercifully and blessedly, Indian hosts with connections facilitated the whole episode to a speedy eight hours); and the parcel sent from the Post Office - comparatively simple yet completely adorned with beguiling and unnecessary flourishes (the hand sewn and wax sealed bijou parcel repackaged in yellow card, denoting demotion from Parcel to Printed Material; relayed from outside stall to inside counter and back again. Repeat. ), thank you for the assistance of strangers. Whilst the deep submersions in to the alien cultural universe of the Kumbh Mela, wandering around dazed as in a hallucination, all sense of normality utterly and entirely dismantled was, I suppose, just necessary little inductions in to the bewilderathon that is India. Throw in  the repetitive utter intrusion of personal space by strangers for photos and inane questioning, and I was getting there. <br>
Thus by Friday morning I was ready. Inducted. Recuperated. Seen enough to know that I wanted in, and knowing the only things that I want to take me in - two legs turning pedals gears and wheels - were my own.  </p>

It doesn't feel like I thought it would...

To start this journey in such a way is only fitting. I've dreamed about doing it for years. Now here I am, hurtling head first in to the journey of dreams, and I'm in a delirious state.
I'm the sickest I've been for a decade, with a fever, shivers, cold sweats, and a painfully persistent cough that's bringing up alien life forms. And my head feels distinctly weird, like it's wrapped in fog, all conversations and actions taking a troublesome age to get through.
No time to dwell on that though. Virgin won't change the flight, the Kumbh Mela won't stop for me, and being ill always sucks wherever you are. So push on through. Abandon most of the things on the 'to do' list because they're not getting done in this subhuman state. Focus on the fundamentals: Pack up the bags and bike. Get to the airport.
Say goodbye.

I'm now in freefall.

Off to India. On my own. Falling in to the great unknown. Yet everything is hideously distorted to muted emotions by this sickness. Excitement, sadness, fear, joy...All are absent save but a faint presence somewhere in my consciousness, wrapped in fog.

I focus on the more basic concerns: when am I going to be able to sleep, get an extra blanket, have some hot water for a lemsip, am I about to be sick? The wonders of Virgin flights are missed on me, as I sit cloaked in blankets and my head in murk, surrounded by a chorus of wailing children and tedious questions from my neighbour. It comes to me at one point that the supernatural sensation of flying mirrors that of the personal freefall of stepping into the unknown, but I think that was replaced by the concern of being able to lie down somewhere with the 12 hours I've got to kill in Delhi before my sleeper train to Allahabad. 8 hours of flying passes in fits of shivers, hot flushes, dehydration and dream/sleep states.

I wait for the irrational post-landing exit  scrum to dissipate and shuffle myself off the plane. Only when I pass a porter with sulphurous ginger hair that it comes real: I'm in India.