Somebody once told me that if you want to go to India, you have to give yourself time. Time to see, to taste, time to sink into the spirit of the land – but most of all, time to get sick. Because even if all the other things leave you cold and uninspired, you will…
You’re at a house party and a woman you don’t know won’t stop blabbering to the group about her three-month trip to India and Nepal.
“I just got back! Like six months ago,” she says, raising her voice to compete with the music.
It’s the third time she’s recounted this anecdote tonight in your earshot,…
In the North of India, lost somewhere in the heart of Rajasthan, near a tiny town with a single dirt road, I went looking for tigers. In a national park as big as a small country, the way you look for tigers is simple: you drive and drive across prairies and through forests, around lakes…
I’m going to be a boxer. I walk to town and ask my tailor to make me a baby blue bathrobe with a hood. This requires a fair amount of pantomiming and gesturing. Then I ask him to make me a pair of red boxing gloves.
“Boxing gloves?” asks Rajesh. He sends a boy out…
Prologue
Two lanky gentlemen are standing in a visa application line at the Japanese consulate in Delhi.
Mr Sajjan: “Mr. Sharma, remind me again why we're exporting Indian drivers, of all things? Mr Sharma: Sajjan Ji, it's just another ploy by the opposition to trick the ruling government into embarrassing themselves. A conspiracy, I tell…
Opening scene: Australia
A beautiful young woman sits at her office cubicle longingly staring at a photo of the La Sagrada Familia on her computer screen. In another window, she opens her online bank account.
“We’re a hundred dollars closer to freedom,” she whispers to herself.
She turns her attention to the framed photo of…
I have a habit of getting into cars with strange men. And despite what your mother may have told you about such activities, I’ve had a good run. I’ve lived to tell the tale of Venetian musos, Nepali gurus, Indian politicians and Spanish royalists, all prepared to give a reckless Kiwi lass a lift in…
There is a fine line between discomfort and danger in the context of travel. Discomfort is that sexy stretching of one’s personal parameters in pursuit of a broader lens on life. Danger is being reckless, indulgent and getting too stoned on a night train in India.
I can’t remember the exact moment my brain ascended…
Pottering through a lively marketplace in the lakeside Indian town of Pushkar, I was seized around the elbow by the firm grip of a wily old lady.
“Hello my baby,” she said.
I turned around eagerly: no one’s called me baby in a while. Unfortunately though, she wasn’t referring to me, but to an adorable…
“Dinner, madam?”
A small frame stretched up and peered into my bed with inquisitive eyes as the Aravalli Range whipped past through the window behind him. He was a dabbawala – a lunchbox delivery man – and he couldn’t have come at a better time.
For several weeks now, I had been traipsing across the…
“My name is Nirvana. I am 26 years old, and I am here to find the love of my life.”
This is a sentence I never in my craziest nightmares thought I would say, but then I found myself on The Bachelor India. Shit.
After graduating from uni four years ago, I was stuck in…
Content warning: themes of sexual assault
In the winter of New Delhi, the birds of prey drew imaginary circles below the smog; they wouldn’t be seeing blue for a long time. The buildings that surrounded my hotel were hungover, power lines strewn over their stocky bodies like streamers at the end of a party. The…