Crash!

The passengers of the Hampi nightbus jumped alert at the unmistakable sound of steel ripping the full length of the bus side. The group peer over the twit and I as the lorry's head sits beneath our window. "Can you see anything?" a young French girl asks. "Not much," replies the Twit, "we just seem to be one big vehicle now".
Smelling fumes we spill onto the black road. Diesel spills from the engine in a black pool on the tarmac. A procession of lorries queue the right side of the road as far into the night. Cars veer to the right of the crash, as if bowling the passengers to the safety of the roadside bushes. Passers by sound horns and lean from vehicle windows to take in the show. The tourists have become the attraction.
The passengers divide into two main groups. The first, true converts to the youtube generation, light cigarettes and paddle the black splash, their steps repeatedly illuminated by the white camera flashes. The second, the twit and I included, repel from the diesel stream and seek safety by the roadside bushes.
Four lads ana a girl from Liverpool hover next to us. One, dressed in a black tracksuit and an eye mask that pushes back a spiralling ginger mane, parades in the headlights to his friend's mobile phone, "I've bloody 'ad two valium n'all. I jus' wanna go to sleep". "Don't mind you, I've 'ad four!", the young girl, hair scraped back in a ponytail calls out. "Its bin a bad week for our Carly," quips the lanky one, "last week she run her scooter straight head on into a cow. Chip?"
Our bus manoeuvres out of its metal tangle and we learn another bus is coming, in three hours. Though how a new bus is going to reach us through two lanes gridlocked with stationary traffic as far as the eye can see is anybodys guess. The majority of passengers hop back on the bus, to sleep until the new arrival. However, the steady stream of diesel spilling into the overflowing bucket keeps some of us nervous. The twit and I play 'Queen is zero' on the roadside. We look up to find the roadblocked lorry drivers spilled loose onto the road are our audience. "Cigarette sir? You have cigarette?" We shake our heads, reluctant to begin sharing with the school of drivers. Aimably they laugh and joke in Hindi. One notices my upwardsgaze to the clear starry night which has reached a temporary moment of calm. "You are star counting?". I point at the three starred diagonal belt, "Orion". "We have Orion at home," the twit bounces his starward gesticuations. "You are from?"...and so goes the conversations of introductions and interest that we are greeted with by each Indian we meet from every walk of life.
The engine has finished its diesel expulsion, and feeling safer we board the bus of travellers attempting to sleep in the middle of the horn beeping cross current of trade trucks heading north.
After any number of hours have passed, we wake up in a pool of headlights. The second bus has arrived. Hovering in a space that is not quite sleep, and is not quite awake, we camber the bus that will take us to Hampi. The whole incident was taken with the calm that comes from just rolling with life. Plans are thrown from the window, and thats ok, because none of us have schedules we need to keep.
The Hampi heat greets us with a pool of rickshaw drivers waving maps and cards in the faces of the sleepy. Rickshaw drivers pounce on their prey and the rest of the passengers are whisked off wordlessly. The twit and I hover in the shade of a nearby tree waiting out the rickshaw feeding time. The twit consults the map. A scrawny young girl of abot 5 clutches her baby brother in one hand and my arm in the other, "Lady, please?" She opens her hand for food or money or both. I turn away. "Lady, please? Lady, please? Lady, please?" The girl is relentless and presses in like the late morning heat. I have to turn my back on her and the sun as she hovers by desperately.
Hampi emerges as a horizon of cascading boulders and high rise stone temples, magnificent. The bazaar is a beeping frenzy of scooters and guest house touts. We meander the lanes, sweat soaking through our worn t-shirts.
At the river crossing a group of Indian teenagers hover around me - "Photo please?". I assent and am surrounded by the gang hooking their arms over my shoulders and beaming. "One more, one more!" they cry, "No more" I squeal, laughing, "You have enough photos of me know".
Across the river a snake charmer dances with his cobras, an empty basket collecting rupees for entertainment. We hover with cameras. The man pauses his pipes and the cobra leaps at him, grabbing his arm with his fangless mouth. How it must feel to keep a pet that is always on the look out to harm you.
Hoisting our bags we clamber the boulder steps to the guest house road north of the river. We look up and see Jonathan ambling down with a girl from Melbourne. The tourist trail is a community. Like an English village, you come to find you do not pass a street without someone you know.