Highway to Hell...

The horn screamed, 4am fever, Nepalese music blasting. Just sleeping was an enlightening experience, the noise hurled me awake into jerk reality like limp being torn from a joint. Rivets clicking and clanking, brakes screeching, arms being crushed into rickety armrests, up, down, up, down and so it went on and on, the saga of the non existent road, an endless wild ride. I looked down and life flashed before my eyes, I almost forgot about the gapping rusted hole in the floor board, wheel just below spinning like mad and tons of gravel belting by just waiting to consume clumsy feet. I gasp for air violently awoken from a blissful intoxicating sleep induced by the monotony of diesel engine rhythm. My lungs filled with white smoke filtering in from the cracked windows and holes in the floor, Shiva must of went to war with that rickety old bus. My eyes still blurred from sleep slowly come into focus, the shock of reality! Cat Stevens is in my head singing, "tell me where do the children play?". Now awake I realize it's 5am, the sun is barley coming up and that cloud of smoke that is embedded in my lungs like a blood sucking tick committing me to sing chorus after chorus of coughs is burning trash. A viole stench of charred plastic bags and human waste fills the air. The horn blazes again, my body is pulled this way and that in unnatural contorted positions, stomach in a seaman's knot as I scan out the window into the morning haze. The semi focused images look like a war zone, buildings falling to pieces, fire in the streets, animals roaming curiously searching the heaps of flames for scarps of food. Suddenly it all becomes clear as if awaken from a 36 hour nightmare, we have finally arrived... the bus comes to a screeching halt and an almost incomprehensible voice belows, "DELHI, LAST STOP."