Car troubles on the long day’s drive from Lumbini (Nepal) to Varanasi (India). A dying battery or a poor battery connection, then a blown air conditioning fuse. Now we have stopped for a bathroom break and our van won’t start. We get out and push, there’s ignition. Someone remarks on our driver lousy jump-starting techniques.
Not far alone, we slow to dip through one of the countless potholes on our way. Again the van stalls. Again we jump out to push. Another few kilometres, another pothole, another stall, another push. This time, as the van jerks ahead, our driver jams on the brakes, sending Keith (a travel mate) slamming forehead first into the open door he has been pushing.
Two towns along, a welt now as big as an Indian puri on Keith’s forehead, we scan the street sides for another battery and cables, and a cold bottle of pop for Keith’s wound.
An hour or so later. We – thirteen people in our tour group – hang out along a fence railing near our van, now parked along a road-cum-market-cum-vehicle part and vegetable stalls. Batteries and cables come and go, as do a long queue of expert but failing solutions to our car problems. A crowd of curious, mostly male, on-lookers has grown steadily, first along the opposite side of the road, then circling around us, inching as close as possible to the young fair-skinned women in our group, the men and boys staring, fascinated, curious. We – pale skinned, Wayne’s lime green bandana and snug in his yellow t-shirt, ambiguous Alex’s tight dark pink pants and closely-cropped hair, several other fair-haired women in tight sleeveless tops – have become the exotic strangers; they, the townsfolk, the curious watchers.
I find freshly fried potato samosas and pass them around. A big hit, so Bo (another traveller in our group) and I go off in search of more. Heh, look at the strangers trying our food. Like we are Hollywood movie or satellite sitcom phantoms made flesh.
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