Read Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle for Free Online

wafted off the hot bare hills.
    ‘Look out for the drops,’ warned Devendra.
    He pointed to a fat brown shape the size of a rat. They were everywhere, dotting the hills like full stops on a page.
    ‘Much shitting here in India,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘These are simple people.’
    ‘Well … where else would they go?’
    Then for some reason, Devendra steered the conversation to where I least expected it.
    ‘Western women … will they dominate me when they are wanting the sex?’
    ‘Dominate? Hmm,’ I didn’t know what to say and said, really, the wrong thing. ‘No, you have to pay more for that …’ I joked as I skipped over a brown lump.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘No. No, they won’t.’
    ‘If I don’t like her but she wants sex with me because she has drinks, what should I do? Will she be angry with me or make problem for me?’
    I couldn’t believe it. Here I was lecturing an Indian teenager about female domination in a minefield of shit! Where was he getting this from?
    Most likely the Internet.
    Internet cafés, to my surprise, were in most parts of India, sometimes even the smallest of towns. Thus, access to hard core pornography was freely available to anyone anytime and often I would see groups of grinning young men in Internet cafés around one terminal screen in awkward aroused silence. One man, embarrassed by my disapproving looks, said, hand in the air, somewhat desperately, ‘It is only … for the knowledge !’
    It was no wonder that sex was often asked about by most men I met in India, sometimes within minutes of meeting them: ‘Much fucking in the West, isn’t it?’ which had me retorting with, ‘Actually, I think there’s much more fucking in India. You’re the ones with over a billion people!’
    ‘Devendra. You’re getting a little ahead of yourself.’
    He returned a confused stare.
    After climbing a small hill, we arrived at the Pandav Lena Caves. Devendra pointed to a large cavern about the size of a garage; unlike the others, it was bare of carvings and statues.
    ‘It is for the elephants,’ he explained.
    In another cave, a solemn-looking Buddha sat serenely, left hand cast to the side, rolled locks crawling up his skull like a cluster of grapes. The caves, built to house monks, dated back to the first century when Buddhism was flourishing. However, the only thing flourishing here at the time of my visit was the smell of damp urine from bats.
    It wasn’t particularly ornamental, a feature perhaps in keeping with some of the philosophies of Buddhism: its non-attachment to world objects, its bare asceticism.
    This of course made staring at the caves about as exciting as, well … staring at a hole in the wall. We sat on a rock by a eucalyptus tree listening to the insects buzzing in the dry afternoon heat, and watching clusters of auto-rickshaws screaming past each other in the wide city streets of Nasik.
    On another rock, local women were placing flowers by a carving of a dancing figure.
    ‘What are they doing?’ I asked Devendra.
    ‘Making prayers.’
    ‘To whom?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Could you ask them?’
    ‘No. I don’t know their language,’ he said with an air of indifference. I wasn’t sure whether he simply didn’t want to talk to them or he really didn’t know their language. After all, there are over 18 official languages in India, not to mention hundreds of dialects. The women looked up, aware that we were talking about them. I smiled but they shyly turned away.
    ‘I think it is time to go,’ said Devendra. The light was beginning to fade. ‘My auntie will worry.’
    Devendra took me to a hotel. The manager led the way upstairs and opened the door to a room with boils. Yellow paint bubbled and popped across the wall while a cracked window pointed to the ensuite with a big, dirty wall fan turning listlessly. Rank water sat in the squat toilet.
    ‘One hundred and fifty rupees,’ the manager said.
    ‘A hundred.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘One