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Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

India: Slowing Down

A rickshaw-wallah sleeping in his rickshaw
Even the locals have to slow down sometimes; just ask this rickshaw-wallah in Pondicherry

India is beginning to slow me down, as if I'm walking through treacle. I've had schedules and plans to keep me company since I started this trip in Sydney some two-and-a-half years ago, and India's no different, but for the first time, I'm losing interest in rushing round and ticking off everything on my list; now I seem to spend most of my planning sessions dropping things from the itinerary, rather than adding them.


1 And sometimes angry too. Howard, for example, would get quite irate with the locals, eventually culminating in a cry of, 'I fookin' hate fookin' Indians, they really piss me off sometimes, they're just fookin' useless!' Luckily I've been able to roll with it as far as it rolls, but poor old Howard did seem to get all the bad luck; while I was travelling with him he never seemed to get what he ordered in restaurants, he always got stared at (probably because he shaved his head), he always ended up in the bus seat next to the dribbling weirdo or in the ladies' section, and not surprisingly it started to get on his nerves. As he put it, 'Any nation who worships an elephant and a monkey must be up the bloody spout anyway.' He still loved it, though...