SO, YOU LIKE IT SPICY?

Twelve hours on an overnight sleeper bus will make you do dumb things, like pay four times more than you ordinarily would for a room based on the fact it seems unlikely that it will lose traction on a steep downhill stretch of road and crash headlong into the room across the hall.


All my independent-traveller's vanity wilted in the face of wall-eyed fatigue as I stepped off the bus in Hampi. I had planned to walk from the bus-stop to a row of guest houses I'd circled in the tour guide but like a man in a spy film who's just discovered that he's been betrayed to his enemies by the woman he loves I'd lost the will to fight. Instead of confidently brushing past the hotel touts and taxi-drivers I resigned myself to fate and didn't even offer token resistance when a young lad lifted my backpack into an auto-ricshaw and motioned me to get in.


Kumar must have noticed my disinterested state and, like the professional young hustler that he is, put me down as an easy mark. I didn't even blink when he quoted the price for the room. He couldn't believe his luck. Beyond caring I just shrugged and took the key. I desperately needed a shower.


An hour later, after a shower and a change of clothes, I left the room in search of breakfast. I opened the main door to the guest house and almost fell over Kumar, who was sitting on the top step. "Ah sir", he said, "it is a good surprise that you are here. I have arranged for you a most exciting tour. You are feeling refreshed I think?"


I was impressed by his dedication even if his desception was a little thin so I invited him to tell me more about this most exciting tour over breakfast.


As I munched my way through a banana pancake Kumar outlined the tour's exhaustive itinerary. It sounded pretty good. I'd get to see all of the ruins I was already planning to visit and get lunch and a corracle ride thrown in as well. I asked him how much and, with the same look of uncertain optimism he'd assumed when quoting me the price of the room, he said "thirty Euros". I laughed so hard I nearly choked on a slice of banana.


To put that price into perspective, thirty Euros is roughly what you would pay for a week's accomodation at a decent guesthouse within spitting distance of one of Goa's beaches. I told him as much and asked if he'd like to reconsider the price. He gave a little smile and wobbled his head. "The Russians" he said, "they always pay without question".


I told him he'd gotten me at a weak moment earlier in the day and that as the guide book suggested 500 rupees (about 10 Euros) for a day-tour we might want to start negotiations there. He looked disappointed.


I ended up agreeing 800 rupees after he promised me an extra-long corracle ride and some sundown beers on a hilltop overlooking the ruins - no mean feat considering Hampi is dry town. I paid the bill for breakfast while he whisteled up a ricshaw-driving pal.

At 18 Kumar has already been spruiking tourists for six years. He learnt a few words of basic English during his limited schooling but the relative fluency with which he speaks the tongue was mostly achieved on the job.

During the five months of the tourist season he works every day without break. He rises before six each morning to meet the overnight sleeper busses which rumble into town shortly after sunrise. The backpackers and budget travellers they offload are not the most lucrative target on the tout circuit but they provide useful income through the commissions the guesthouses offer him for delivering business to their doors. And occasionally they even throw up a lucrative pigeon like me.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays he rises before five in order to sell postcards to the Russian tourists who arrive on those days to watch the sunrise from the temple on the hill to the east of town. They rarely haggle over price.

And he gets a small kickback every time he acts as a fixer for the tourists; the corracle boatmen and the ricshaw drivers paying him a retainer to keep business moving in their direction and the drug dealers and sly-grog shops offering him a finder's fee for scouting cashed up travelers looking for weed and booze.

For the other seven months of the year he works in the banana plantations and rice paddies which surround the town, labouring in the ocean of green which spreads between the islands of ochre-hewn boulders that rise like pyramids of oranges from the flood plain.

He told me he was saving money for his sister's dowry. She is 16 now and will want to marry before she turns 21. As the oldest son in his family it is his responsibility to make sure it happens. All the spare money he earns over the next five years will go to her.

His next priority will be to buy himself a house, which will put him in a position where he himself can marry. He expects this to take him a further five years.

If everything goes according to plan for Kumar, in ten year's time he'll have a house, a wife and a married sister.

"You'll be twenty-eight" I said after he outlined his plans, "that's nearly the same age as I am now."

"I see" he said, "Do you yourself have a house and a wife?"

"Ahhh, no." I replied, "I don't". He looked shocked and then sympathetic.

"But my sister is married" I added quickly. He looked relieved.

That night I ate dinner on the balcony of my guesthouse. As I munched slowly but diligently through the moulten hot vegetable thali I'd ordered the waiter, perhaps noticing the film of sweat that had formed across my face, walked over to inquire if I perhaps needed something to take the sting out of the meal. "No" I replied, not wishing to admit weakness.

"Oh I see" he said, leaning in and waggling his eyebrows suggestively. "You like it spicy!"

Indeed.

That is all for now.

Dale Atkinson