I AM ON A BUS.

I haven't showered in days and my hair feels like straw. I'm sitting next to the grubby window and leaning out of it with my scarf over my nose and mouth so I don't have to smell the burning leaf and tobacco from the old man sitting directly behind me, or catch whatever it is that the lady in front of me is hawking up, but that just means I have to put up with the clouds of dust kicked up from passing trucks and the black exhaust fumes spewing forth from under the bus. The driver is laying on the horn and it's giving me a headache. The road is so violently bumpy that it's a miracle the windows don't just shatter. My ass is killing me but I have no room to move to a more comfortable position thanks to the backpack squashed down between my legs. Some inconsiderate little f*** is blaring Hindi music from his phone speaker at full volume. I want to throw it, and him, out the window. There's a kid crying somewhere up front. My Kit-Kat is melting. I don't want to be here but there's nothing I can do about, so I don't. It's times like these that India isn't such a fun place to be. I've said to myself more times than I can remember that I wouldn't do this again. "Only as a last resort". But I slept in. Again. It's hard when you don't have the time. And so I'm on this bus.

I'm going back to Delhi. One more night in India and I'm homebound. I'm willing to pay a little extra for some modern comforts but the bus arrives so late that I just have to take what I can. I know I'm paying too much for it and I have a feeling they're trying to fleece me for a couple of rupees extra, but I'm just too damn tired to care. At least the room is clean, even if the bathroom is in a separate room across the hall.

I should write some nice things about the things I've seen and the places I've been to since the last entry. The obligatory Taj Mahal is in there somewhere, crawling with tourists like a perfect jewel in a trash can. (Agra is the trash can, the tourists are the ants crawling all over it.) There's a couple of crumbling forts sitting with fading majesty over the dirty crowded cities below and infested with rabid monkeys. There are mountain valleys and ashrams and more rooftop restaurants and hippies and pashmenas and yogis than you can poke a stick at. There's a motorbike ride to a waterfall that we spent a good hour trying to cross without being swept over the edge, a thong that actually was swept over the edge and miraculously found again at the bottom, and an attempted moto trip through the mountains that make up the Himalayan foothills to a hillstation called Mussoorie. But as we found out, motorbikes, loose rocks, precipitous mountain passes and ice and snow don't mix all that well, and, needless to say, we never made it to Mussoorie. But it was worth it for a fleeting glimpse of the Himalaya, so distant, so high, so big, and so white that for the first few moments it was impossible to discern them from the clouds, but then it hits you and you have one of those little moments that you remember long after all the inconveniences and frozen limbs have faded away.

And so now I say farewell to India, and hello two uncomfortable nights of cramped flights, waiting in airports, a couple of trains and buses, and then I'm home again, to a comfy warm bed and a long hot shower. Now my jaws are sore from chewing this gum for so long, so I'm just gonna go spit it out. Laterz.