Taken From All About My Hat The Hippy Trail 1972 ISBN 978-0993210716
That evening, Al and Diane met a group of young English guys at the hostel. They had chatted for a while in the courtyard where there was a water pump that guests tended to gather round, covering themselves with cool water when the heat of the day had gotten too much.
One of the boys, Graham, was telling Al that they had come from England overland through Iran and Afghanistan. He had Infectious Hepatitis. He thought he had caught it in the opium den in Kabul!
Al said: “Wow, I went there and I got 'hep' too. I've been in hospital for two weeks. I got dysentery too. They told me not to drink alcohol and not to eat fried food.”
“Yep me too, we cook our own now. Why don't you two come to eat with us tonight. Just some boiled rice and boiled veggies, safer than eating round here, I think.”
So, a couple of hours later, Al and Diane went to Graham's room. They smoked some joints with them, then Graham started pulling things out of his rucksack to get ready to cook.
Al spotted a compass very similar to the one he had sold in Chicken Street in Kabul.
“Hey, I used to have a compass like that!” Al exclaimed, “I had to sell it in Kabul – funny thing was I got what it cost me in England, and the guy in the shop didn't seem to know what it was! I think he thought it was magic!”
Graham laughed out loud and said:”Bloody hell man, that's where I bought it, in a shop in Chicken Street. Yeh I don't think he knew what it was. Weird innit? He kept showing me how it pointed up the street. How strange!”
Al looked more closely and for sure it looked exactly like the one he had sold.
Graham cooked a meal of green peppers stuffed with onions and carrots and rice. Al thought it was delicious.
They ate with Graham the next day. They hardly went out of the hostel at all that day. "It was well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. When they did go for a stroll round Connaught Circus, browsing the shops and trying to avoid the hawkers and the pools of red spit out by the Betel Nut chewers, suddenly the sky opened and it rained really heavy!
As Al and Diane darted into a shop for shelter, lots of Indian men and women ran out of the shops into the rain and started jumping for joy. So Al and Diane ran back into the rain, became soaked and joined the celebration. Apparently it was the first rain that year. The road became a little flooded and the traffic slowed, amidst a great honking of horns and ringing of bicycle rickshaw bells.
The rain stopped as abruptly as it had started.
Al and Diane, now soaked, headed back to the hostel, but the heat had dried their clothing even before they got there.
Al looked out for Keith, but did not see him.
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