Like a dream

Still nursing a throbbing headache and a fever I look out of the airplane window as the flight lands in Delhi close to midnight. I'm not in a mood for this at the moment. The plan requires too much energy over the next few days. Nevertheless it's Thursday night, I have a day off from work tomorrow and it's too late to go back so here goes everything. I take a taxi across the city to Sector 35 in Noida where the great host Mr Ambu lives. And in his parking lot I say a quick hello to my motorcycle which has been sitting there for the last five weeks refusing to start. Should I try and start it tonight? No way, I just go upstairs and pass out - hoping that something will wake me up early tomorrow...

At six I happen to wake up and it looks like the stars are cooperating. Pack bags and head downstairs groggy. Ambu's with me. We spend the next two hours trying to start the bike. Cockroach is sulking. A change of spark plug, a jump start, some minor tuning, and relentless kicking, demonstrates though that my love is real and eventually we coax Cockroach to start - yay! Step 2 is Delhi rush hour. By the time I actually get out of the city and hit the Jaipur highway it's past 11. But slowly a kind of elation has been rising within me and I'm actually having conversations with Cockroach now - just happy to be riding and reunited I guess... At mile marker 135 I run out of gasoline and no one around me has any. Well it's four kilometres to the next gas station but these guys are nice enough to give me a ride - although it takes a while to get there. The ride back is a little faster but not by that much and time doesn't really matter anymore anyway. So I continue onwards (seeing some strange sights along the way).

I have two objectives: to load my bike on a train to Bangalore from Jaipur - where I hope the officials relax (unlike their Delhi counterparts) and to find "Moondust" (a five day psychedelic trance music festival featuring djs from ALL over the globe set amidst the dunes of the Rajasthani desert). It's too late for Jaipur now so I decide to go look for the party. Soon enough I find people who give me directions to get off the highway and head inwards towards Moondust. I get lost for a bit but with the motorbike everything's easy and eventually I find the place on a farm 4km from Ramgarh which is a village 20km from the highway. The party hasn't started yet but people are starting to roll in and so I get inside and pitch my tent (yes I'm all prepared for this) and relax with some guys from the next tent till about nine when suddenly the air around me starts to pulsate with beats. The party's started. Great music that night and it goes on and on into the next morning and in fact I'm told it's not going to stop for the next five days! Somewhere during the day I take my bike and slip into Jaipur to load it on the train. Everybody's relaxed, everything's smooth and nobody even asks me to show my documents which I spent an entire day forging at "Jas Forgeries International" before I left from Bangalore. A cycle rickshaw takes me around town making random stops to eat (the most delicious) kachoris and badam milk. I manage to meet my friend Aditi briefly before I head right back to the party. More great music that night, they've now setup a chillout stage and there's a really cool live dj from Delhi who plays a nice extended set that night. Also meet some friends from Bangalore and get to talk to a couple of the superstar djs and get some perspective into their lifestyle which is totally nuts - nonstop touring, jetsetting around from one party to the next. Ma Faiza says she hasn't stayed in one place for more than two weeks in years! More psychedlia and madness that night and unfortunately the next day it's time to leave. I stretch it till about 11am and then I pack up and hit the road. I hitch a bus to Jaipur and then another one to Delhi gets me to the airport well in time to catch my delayed flight back to Bangalore. I land at 2am. Whew, what a weekend.