OK, I hope you have more fun reading this than I did at the time !!
Well, I gave up work about 12 years ago to head to Australia for the usual backpacker visa working holiday, and on the way I wanted to check India out as it had always intrigued me as a place since my older sister had come back about 2 years previously and said how different it was .
So with an old female school friend , plutonic only ( her loss ... hehe)we landed in Delhi, which was a right shock to the system I can tell you , especially for your first insight to life in India, when you get hassled by all the Taxi drivers at the airport and then the sight of lepers hanging out of your window at 6am soon puts you off your first curry breakfast.
Anyway, I am starting to dribble, so I will get to the good bit...we had been travelling for about 6 months , mainly on an old motorbike that I had bought for about 100 quid and we used to put it on trains and boats and armed with hammocks and backpacks we used to just drive and crash at some of the most remote parts of rural India.
We eventually ended up in Goa, and at last some sort of normality , we hadnt seen ANY white people for about 2 months, so it was quite refreshing to meet some other travellers and exchange stories and share some ice cold beers at sunset, Goa is a wicked place , if you havent been then you must go, although I hear it has changed for the worst in the past few years, which is a pity.
After about 2 months in Goa we had met up with a nice gang of people and we all felt quite comfortable , but that was soon to change....
We decided we were going to visit the Maldives , as it was so cheap to fly there from Goa and we wanted to get away from living in beach huts for a bit of luxury , so 6 of us set off ..
When we landed in Mali , it was immediately obvious that this was not such a luxury place as we had imagined, it is more like an upmarket resort in India and the locals are very poor , it is ,merely for the 5* hotel market, so when we all turned up we looked a bit out of place to say the least...
So we had to endure the obligatory search , but we had been WARNED when we were in India never to take any drugs into the Maldives as they have a zero tollerance for drugs , being a 100% Muslim country, so we all heeded their warnings and made sure there were no old Buds in our bags, so we had no worries..
Well when I was being searched , Bryn, who was a young lad we had hooked up with in India , was stood next to me , and was looking very aggitated , and the guy who was searching opened his book and shook it upside down, and onto the table fell about 6 ACID tabs........the BLOODY IDIOT, in a splt second Bryn lent over and grabbed the drugs from the table in front of him and decided the best cause of action was to try and leg it , what a plonker, we were on a bloody Island for god's sake, and unless he thought he could swim back to India , we were in trouble.
There was a massive commotion as you can imagine , and the security guards, armed with machine guns, reacted by chasing him thru the airport , we were all just waiting for the sound of the guns going off and seeing a dead Bryn being dragged back in by his legs, and we were then all to deny that we even knew the dick.
The rest of us were then led away to another room where we had to endure the formalities of a strip seach, not very nice I can tell you
they then took all our medicines to check they were genuinely head ache tablets and not MDM .
A few hours past and we were all sat in separate rooms, when the door of my room flew open and this fat geezer was stood there with a massive smile on this ageing chubby face , and he had one of my bottles in his hand with a seed in the other. He said this is marajuana and you are going to prison and then just shut the door.
A few more hours past, which felt like a lifetime , and then I got taken into this dingy room and they told me , in very broken English I was being charged with importing illegal drugs into the Country and they chucked me in a cell ,with all the local hoodlums , and where Bryn was sitting, which was weird as in one hand I was glad to see somebody I knew, but I also wanted to throttle the XXXX
We all had to lie on the floor like sweaty sardines , about 20 of us, and then the next morning a prison officer came in with a clip board and started to read out some names, and both of ours were on it, so I was thinking "sweet", its all been a big fuk up and they were just going to release us without charge.
Luckily Bryn had been able to despose of the tabs when he legged it from the airport , so they didnt have any phsical evidence against us, except for the seed the size of a pinhead...
Well we were sooooo wrong, they cuffed us and took us back to the Marina where we were surrouned by honeymooners giving us filthy looks and we were put on this boat and set off across the India ocean for about 2 hours where we landed at this Island which we could see this massive grey building with barbed wire on the roof which was obviously the local prison.
We were escorted in and all our belonging were removed and replaced with a grey overall, beaing in mind it was the middle of summer and about 40 degrees , it was the last thing we needed , i just wanted my boardies and thongs.
We were then walked around the horseshoe courtyard of cells and put in one in the middle.
It was tiny and filthy and stank like a busy whoare house . There were 14 of us in that cell, when it should only be about 6.
There were no beds, just the sand floor, the toilet was a plastic tube in the corner , in full view of everyone , with flies everywhere. Being India, there was no toilet paper of course, hand only , and the food was pumpkin curry 3 times a day served out of a wheelie bin , and we were given a bottle of warm water at breakfast which had to last all day . We were incarcarated 24 hrs a day , only allowed out for a swim / wash at 10am on a saturday for 15 minutes, when fight broke out due to the built up frustrations , fortunately being a reasonably fit rugby player / surfer, I was not in too much danger.
This was to be my home for the next 90 days.( And NO IPOD ! )
To be honest most of the time it wasn't too bad, you sort of have to get used to the limited conditions and company and just hang to the hope that one day justice will prevail, but it was the not knowing that was the real killer, we had no idea from day1 how long they intended to keep us, the guards were far from friendly and we were not even allowed a phone call , and this was pre Internet days , luckily the other 4 ppl that flew with us were released without charge after a few hours.
They were told that we were to be deported back to London the next day, so my friend arranged for some close friends to meet me at the Airport , but they waited and waited and still no sign of us so they were left with no choice to raise the alarm bells with our families , it was a pretty hard call for my friend to make to tell my Mum that her son had been locked up in Asia for drug offences !
So days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and still nothing , and I was beginning to lose my rag somewhat, and started shouting at the guards , not advisable , next thing they stormed my cell and dragged me out by my feet and dragged me along the courtyard , whilst being spat at by the other cells, and thrown into solitary confinement for 7 awful days. The cell was about 5 feet high and 3 feet wide and I just got the food shuffed under the door and I could barely reach round to grab it.
The only entertainment we did was to carve out some chess pieces out of the soap we were given , and made the sand floor into a sort of chess board and it worked very well seeing as we had very limited resources. It was the highlight of the day when it was your turn to play !
Fortunately , without our knowledge , English consulate decided to put down his pinacolada, get off his sunbed and try to get us released .
One morning , after 90 gruelling days, our cell door opened and a guard ushered us out and told us we were to be released… We still didn’t know if this was another one of their sick jokes , so it was hard to get too excited . They took us on a boat back to the mainland to the police station ,not for the first time as we were taken back a few times previously only to find out that it was just to make a small amendment to our statements .
However, this time felt different and they took us, in handcuffs, to the local travel agent’s office where we booked our flight for the next morning, we were returned to the police station and kept in a cell until the next day and were after the compulsory paperwork was completed and mug shot picture , we were then escorted to the plane , still in bloody handcuffs, which didn’t looked good in front of all the honeymooners I can tell you !
I was never so relieved to see a plane again........
After 14 hours and 12 cans of Fosters I was back in good old England !!
The only good thing about the whole thing was that I had full board accomodation in the Maldives with a sea view , for free !!
Well sorry for boring the pants off you , I got a bit carried away, but dont let that put you off contacting me........xx
India
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