Day 5, Delhi.
It's dusk and there is a convivial vibe in the city as yet another festival gets underway. Marty and I have just bought a 350cc Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike each and are heading to a park to get some off road, out of traffic practice in before we hit the streets.
Before we get to the park we have a couple of kilometers of nightmarish Delhi traffic to contend with. We set off with Balu, an American bear of a man who owns Bullet Wallahs - the motorbike shop we've been hanging out in for the last few days and where we've just purchased our 'new' motorbikes.
After the first big junction I look around to find that Balu and Marty have been swallowed up by the traffic and are no longer anywhere in sight, I hit the brakes as I approach the slowing traffic. Nothing happens. I slam both front and back brakes on. Nothing happens. The car in front gets very close. Something happens. I slide into the back of the car infront, smash up my knee and land in a mess on the tarmac. Oh dear. Before I've had a chance to shake myself out of a daze and check for compound fractures, the owner of the car that has just broken my fall has sprung from his vehicle (still in the middle of 4 lanes of traffic) taken the keys out of my bike and begins shouting at me with some vigour.
It is at this point I realise that in my haste to get on my bike and live the dream I had omitted to bring anything else out with me, no wallet, no map, no phone and no return if lost address. I'm pretty disorientated and have no idea which way home is. I come to, and am now in the centre of a rather large circle of very shouty men. About 30 behind me and 50 in front. On closer inspection of the car there was a bit of a scratch but no dent or serious damage done, my bike on the other hand was looking a bit bashed - the clutch pedal was bent up and I'd buckled the front wheel a bit. Hmmm, the owner of the car was insisting I give him all my money, and wasn't very impressed when I turned out my pockets and shook my head: 'No rupee mister what you want me to do?" I asked.
"You walk to your hotel, I stay here and keep your bike till you get back - you go get me money." He screamed in my face. That's all good but i still had no idea where I was and was fairly sure that if I were to go in search of my hotel and return with my wallet some hours later, the angry man and my bike would have long since eloped. What a pickle. I suggest he comes with me? No cigar.
Meanwhile the shouty crowd is getting larger, and increasingly more manic. As far as I can tell half are for me and half are against me. A very heated discussion unfolds in Hindi which goes on for maybe twenty minutes, most of which I cannot understand, perhaps for the best. Then I hear the word police and for the fist time begin to get a wee bit panicked - I am without helmet (illegal) or paperwork (illegal) or insurance (illegal)and more importantly I am without cash, no rupee = no backsheesh = very big problem. I come to the conclusion that action is called for - if he won't give me back my keys and I refuse to leave my bike there with him and 80 odd other wildly gesticulating bystanders, I shall bloody well push the 180 kilos of metal through the streets of Delhi until I find some sort of solution, action at this point surely had to be better than inaction. Right?
I pick my bike up, and limping a bit (I'm too proud to check out the damage to my knee at this point) begin to push it out of the traffic and on down the street. Oddly, the screaming match continues, but my departure seems to go unnoticed. Then, after maybe 200 meters I hear brakes screeching to a halt behind me and feel something hit my back and clatter to the floor - my keys! It would seem that I had out-foxed the man, I think the penny must have dropped when he saw a battered 6 foot tall white chick hauling a great hunk of metal up the road he realised his desire for money was no match for my lunacy. I stand there awestruck in a cloud of exhaust fumes feeling more than a bit relieved.
Now then, how the hell to get home? Three guys on a moped pull up shortly after and cast me an olive branch - these chaps had been fighting my corner back at the scene of the crime, and I think I probably have them to thank for not being torn apart by the baying crowd - this sounds a bit extreme, but it's not unknown for citizens to take policing matters into their own hands.
'Hey lady - you lost?'
'Um, yep, just a little bit. Do you know Paharganj?'
'No worry lady, you follow us.'
I climb back atop my bike and fire her up. All is well, just. We crawl our way back through traffic, all the while I'm leaning down to change gears using my hand as I can longer fit my boot under the buckled gear lever. We finally make it back to the shop, I say a huge thanks to my knights on a their rusted out Honda Hero and slope back into the shop expecting a shit storm to have unfolded in my rather lengthy absence.
Feeling a bit sheepish I pull up my bike and lope into the shop - but where's Marty and where's Balu? Surely they can't have been so callous as to leave me to fend for myself on the mean streets of Delhi at night? As it transpires this is not the case, but in the mayhem of the festival and the lack of a phone between us we'd all done a grand job in completely losing each other. So, rather than being lambasted as a stupid white girl for crashing her bike and getting into trouble on her maiden voyage, I was applauded for coping so valiantly and finding my way back.
'But Holly,' they asked 'what has happened to your wheel, why like this?'
'Ahhh,' I say 'Funny you mention this' - cue me asserting my consumer rights and demanding a free fix up for selling me a bike with dodgy brakes.
Marty and Balu eventually turned up another hour or so later, and boy was it a happy reunion. It wasn't until later that night safely back at the hotel did I roll up my trousers and tell Marty exactly what had happened. Good Lord, what were we doing? About to head off on a six month odyssey around the sub-continent unarmed and unaided. I decided to take a philosophical approach, I figured if I could get through that I could pretty much get through anything. Little did I know how true this would prove to be.
Dogs in Bangalore, police in Mahabaleshwar and then again in Goa and then again in Karnataka, a night under the stars with a midnight drunk and a gun along, Russian George who swallowed all his gold teeth, all of this and more was still to happen. But if anything had been proved that day, it's that with bad always comes good.
Whoever those three men on that bike were, they deserve good things to happen to them, I have a feeling without their generosity and good will this story may not have been told in the same way.
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