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.
