Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
When I looked underneath the engine, I saw that there was a dreaded leak. I had not only
failed my chemistry test and my driving exam, but I was also clearly failing the course on
motorbike management that I had inadvertently signed up for in taking this trip.
For those of you who haven't been to India, I am about to share one of its many secrets:
When anything goes wrong in India, people arrive. Lots of people. They mingle. They
watch. They chatter among themselves. They often try and help. When an Englishman on a
yellow motorbike drives into a freshly painted wall, the whole town comes out. Including,
as I found out, the local karate master.
I am not joking. I mean at the moment, I wondered whether I was seeing things, but
that's an upside of having a camera crew with you. They can help you identify the differ-
ence between crazy shit that actually happened and good old-fashioned hallucinations, and
the karate master was no hallucination.
After introducing himself in broken English, which was much better than my Hindi, I
asked him, “What color belt do you have?”
“Black belt,” he replied dryly as he walked around my bike. I had managed to stop the
leak, but Kindness One was going to need a lot more help than that.
“Can you teach me some karate?” I asked, thinking this would lighten the mood a bit,
and maybe convince the karate teacher to help a fellow out.
“Done. And change to uniform.”
I know, I know. This moment can't be real. There is no way a karate master stopped to
look at my bike and brought along with him a freshly cleaned karate costume in my size.
Well, that first part is all true. The size part—not so much. The jacket fit tightly over my
T-shirt, and the pants barely fit around my trousers, but it was good enough for the karate
master and certainly for the quickly growing audience around us.
Our first interactions were quite gentle, but then the karate master stood back and
smiled.
“I will hug you,” he stated for all to hear. I was ready to be embraced, thinking our lesson
was over. I should have paid more attention to my karate instructor when I was young.
Never expect a hug.
Instead, what I got was a jarring kick to the face. As though riding my bike into a wall
hadn't been bad enough, I had also just ridden my face into this stranger's foot. He star-
ted to circle me, showing off some Bollywood moves for the audience as they laughed and
cheered him on. What had I gotten myself into? I was about to get my arse kicked less than
