It’s not often you can credit Facebook for keeping you on track, but it happened to me.
Countless afternoons of being carried on the wings of whims, hungers and a search for the cheapest place to get a decent coffee had extinguished my reliance on a wrist watch, let alone a calendar. I’d been keeping a lazy eye on the date via my computer but somehow I’d managed to not notice that it had been April 1st for about 4 days straight. It was a tasteful April Fool’s joke, I suspect, caused by a power surge that fried my laptop battery.
Then a status update by a friend who I was supposed to meet on the 5th of April in Istanbul read: “In a few hours I’ll never have to listen to Korean pop ever again”.
A few hours? A few days maybe….
A stranger, huffing a giant hash joint at the table next to me, confirmed the date. It was April 4th already. I had about 14 hours to get to Delhi to make my plane. Oops.
Naked, covered in ash from human cremation, carrying a human skull, and impossibly surreal, an Aghori walked in my direction as I hastily exited the coffee shop. This was, I assume, an extension to the April Fool’s joke being played on me by the cosmic forces. I’d been searching for these guys since I arrived in India. In my final, rushed hours, they passed me by. India is a playful place and jokes at your expense are frequent.
Minutes later, all that I own has been collected from my hotel room and stuffed into a bag on my back. I’m on a bus before I can even turn around to say good-bye to Rishikesh…this place that I really loved.
Run to the bus, then an auto-rickshaw to the airport, the 10 hour journey is complete. 4 hours to spare. Thanks for everything India. Really.
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