Jungle police
In Bangladesh with my chum John I once visited a temple on top of a hill. The hike should have been a simple one: start at the bottom, yomp up the hill in a straight line, gaze for a while at the relics and then saunter back down again whistling a gay air. At the top, however, John and I took our fill of the temple and were left wanting more. So, consulting our map, we spotted a promising looking dotted line leading to a village; looking up, the dotted line corresponded to a path leading into the hills. We decided to follow that path and see what we could achieve there.

Now, I have alluded to the night spent in the jungle on b3ta before- www.b3ta.com/questions/animals/post149952 In summary, the path soon ran out and, getting lost, we spent a joyless night starving and being eaten alive by ticks. As the sun set, John and I pinpointed the source of our woe; namely that the map we were relying on for this cross country expedition was, on closer inspection, a bus map.

When the sun rose again we realised that we had already lost the path that we had been assuming was the dotted line on our map, so we decided to abandon the map and just hoof it in an easterly direction (by following the sun) until we found a river, then to follow abovementioned river until we found civilization. Surely enough following the river led us to a community of farmers who were kind enough to share with us their bread and salt. They were a tremendously sporting bunch, and even offered us a chaperone back to the nearest village.

Eventually, after another couple of hours of hiking, we reached the market and our chaperone hooked us up with his buyers. One chap in the village spoke English, and offered us a ride to town. When we finally arrived after a bumpy hour long motorbike ride we met a welcoming committee consisting of a bunch of khaki clad coppers pointing ugly looking rifles at us.

So to recap, the previous day we had gone on a hike; got lost; spent the night in the jungle; woke up infested with ticks; waded along a river; now the fuzz were after us.

The captain was the only chappie in the copshop who spoke English, so we were kept in cell 1 until he returned from his tea. An hour of kicking our heels later a dapper gentleman with a pencil moustache (think of a Bengali David Niven and you wouldn't be far off) proceeded to interrogate us. He spoke in that glorious Indian English, you know the one, peppered with words like "rannygazoo" and "rigmarole". On hearing our story he asked for our passports; and we being the chumps we were had of course left them in our hotel in the other side of the country (don't give me that look, neither of us knew we'd end up in this situation). We phoned the hotel to find some way of notarizing our passports and faxing them over to the police station; while they set about doing that, the Captain, John and I were at a bit of an impasse.

More to break the silence than anything, John asked for a drink. The captain summoned a boy to bring us a drink, giving him a few banknotes to buy a couple of bottles. When he returned with mineral water, the captain, bless him, gave the boy a clip round the ear and said "These gentlemen, our guests, are English! Don't bring water, bring them some coke. Make sure it's cold." John and I realised we were onto a good thing here, the circs. notwithstanding. When we asked for a bite to eat the copper plied the old child abuse routine once again and whisked us up some biscuits, served on a china plate of all things. When we asked for a wash he arranged for a bucket of hot water and a block each of wrapped Imperial Leather.

We then decided to push our luck as far as we dared, and pointed out that our clothes were soiled from the jungle, and was there anything we could do about it please? The captain chewed his pencil for a while, and said he couldn't send us clothes shopping because we were under his custody; but maybe Asif could help. Asif was a burly sergeant who weighed more than John and me combined. The captain briefed him and, well stone the crows, Asif took us shopping. He literally escorted us at gunpoint to a shopping centre and pointed us to the gentlemen's loungewear section. Stranger still, despite not speaking a word of English, he conveyed to John that the white trousers didn't suit him at all and that the beige were considerably better.

Upon returning to the police station the captain announced that he had received the faxes of our passports, and that we were free to go. He also took the opportunity of telling us that we were silly idiots, and that the reason the gun element was so stressed over the course of the afternoon was that the dotted line on our map was not in fact a path for jolly afternoon saunters but in fact the demarcation of a restricted border zone in which Burmese separatists had been conducting gun smuggling activities, and that when we were picked up sans passports we were in effect suspected terrorists. Boy, did we feel silly.
(I grew it myself, Sat 7 May 2011, 14:35, 4 replies)

Linky no worky.
www.b3ta.com/questions/animals/post149952 does the trick, though.

Nice story!
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Sat 7 May 2011, 14:57, closed)

Ah, whoops
Thanks for pointing that out, it's edited and fixed now. Thank you!
(I grew it myself, Sun 8 May 2011, 8:39, closed)

A cracking pair of tales you've got there!
i like the way you convey the image of the captain ;)
clicky x
( blaireau69 , the Cumbrian Travis Bickle., Sat 7 May 2011, 15:09, closed)

terrorists?
yeah, asif.....
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sat 7 May 2011, 21:19, closed)