On our last day in Mumbai we ate some sandwich-like food which is "typical Bombay street food, must try", in the evening we had a gin and a beer, then in the night we ate a big portion of tandoori chicken.
One of these killed our stomachs. Completely. Especially mine. I woke up with a baaad hangover, I felt I cannot get up. We had to leave our hotel by midday but I was still dead at 11:30. Quite unexpected after ONE beer and ONE shot. But then it got worse. I got a bad diarrhea, went to the loo every 6.5 minutes from 12 to 2PM. Then we had to take a cab to our bus to Goa at 2. While waiting for the bus I went to the toilet three times. And then began the 16 hour bus ride. You can imagine.
Luckily I still had some energy to think so when I felt this bus ride was not gonna be easy I took my medicine pack to the bus, along with my sweater and my winter hat. I quickly checked my temperature: 39.4 Celsius. Well, this kind of explained why I was half-dead. I took an antifebrile, waited 1 hour, still 39.4. Another pill, waiting, then it went down to 37 point something. Meanwhile I was constantly shaking with a 10 cm amplitude, despite having on my sweater, Judit's BIG sweater and my winter hat. I felt very cold, although it was about 30 degrees outside. After, when my fever went back to 39.4, I thought "Okay, this is not funny anymore", I called a doctor friend of mine in Hungary, asking for advice. He told me to take off the sweaters immediately to stop sweating and drink endless amount of water not to dry out. Well, this part was tough, you know, we were sitting on a bus, it's not advisable to drink a lot because then you have to pee all the time.
Just after I called my friend the bus stopped the first (and only!) time for a little break, so I went over to the driver to tell him I feel like shit and I have to drink a lot of water so I'm going to stop the bus occasionally to go pee. Well... Wait for it... the driver didn't speak any English. I started shouting around in the restaurant and near the bus to find someone who speaks English. I found no one. No single passenger or staff personnel spoke more than a little English. So I just bought 7 liters of water in the shop and played some Activity with the driver hoping that the understood at least half of it. (Ha probably didn't.)
So we started off again to Goa. It was already dark by then. I began to pour the water to myself - while certainly I'd have had to go take a shit VERY badly all the time - and occasionally I went to the front to stop the bus. This wasn't as straightforward as it sounds. In India, bus and truck production is quite basic: the factory only builds the chassis, motor and dashboard, and then the buyer can decide whether he wants to make a truck or a bus out of it, and what kind of. So each bus and truck will be a little different. So this particular bus was built in a way that the 4-5 square meters around the driver was separated from the passenger space by a wall. The wall had a door and some plastic windows looking to the driver, but there was no knob or anything to open the door from the passenger side. Quite unfriendly. So I couldn't open it, tried to knock but the driver didn't hear it because of the sound of the motor and horns and all. I tried to blink with my phone, no effect. In the end I gave up and walked back to my seat, having no other choice I decided to piss in a bottle. Well, the bus was quite crowded and I'm not that experienced with these piss-in-the-bottle-on-the-bus things so... I failed. I went back to the wall in front of the bus and I started banging the plastic window part with my phone very hard. At last for this noise he turned around and noticed me. I waved like a freak, so he stopped the bus, I jumped off and you don't want to know what I did to the first bush I came across.
So this is how I passed these 16 hours, but it's not all! - YES, it can always be worse - the driver put on a movie. But no ordinary movie! He put on that great new Indian movie called BODYGUARD, a wonderful product of Bollywood studios. The main characteristic of the movie is that some voice shouts every 2 minutes "MADAME! BODYGUARD!". For some reason. And he did it with max volume from the only speaker on the bus which was directly facing us two with Judit. (No exaggeration, there was literally 1 speaker on the bus and it was precisely facing our centers of mass.) And the sound was completely distorted because of the volume. My only solution in my half-conscious misery was to chew some small pieces of papers I found in my pocket and stick them into my ears to at least ease the feeling. MADAME! BODYGUARD! Still getting the goose skin when I think of it.
I found a trailer for you. Without a fever it's approx 4 and a half points better than with it, but you can turn it up to full volume, that helps a bit :)
By the way if you're really suicidal, here is the full movie too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZpZ0c7Hv7A
After drinking an awful lot of water and stopping the bus several times, dawn came and we arrived to Goa. I went to the station toilet twice in a row immediately (as well as Judit, she didn't feel perfect either), and once again on the street. Meanwhile I was wondering that I kind of defeated an insecurity I had had: whenever I had been in a permanent situation of not having a clean WC around I had always kept it back for days rather than using a dirty toilet. Well, this time I agreed with practically any horizontal surface with some leaves around (not having any toilet paper around)
Then we quickly found a guesthouse and called a doctor, who gave me 7 kinds of medicine for 5 days and a prescribed a diet, and I just lay there for 5 days. After it I was OK and since then my stomach seems to take anything. But surely I'm also much more cautious with unknown food.
Sorry about the nasty details.
