As if a lifetime spent in airports and planes crossing the globe wasn’t torture enough, what awaited me at my destination was an even deeper horror: a prolonged social event.

Specifically, I was going to a wedding in Mumbai, India.

The groom, my best friend from Yale, Martin Deshmukh, had guilt-tripped me into joining his wedding party. (I thought sending a generous wedding gift should have sufficed, but Martin had other ideas.)

Joining me on my reluctant odyssey were my bodyguard, Jim, and my personal assistant, Reggie.

My rumination on my fate was interrupted when a flight announcement blared out, informing everyone it was time to pack up, strap in, and prepare for landing.

We proceeded to do so without incident.

Once on the ground, Reggie, Jim and I deplaned into the hubbub of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, swimming through the chaos with a school of fellow passengers.

We aroused no particular curiosity among the customs and immigration crowd and were quickly tagged, measured and released into the wild.

Reggie was insistent upon taking tuk-tuks—the Indian name for small, inexpensive three-wheel auto-rickshaws—from the airport to the home of the groom’s relatives, where we had been invited to stay. For reasons beyond my understanding, Reggie found the little open-air taxis unimaginably exotic.

Exhausted from our travels, Jim and I gave in without a fight. We trudged to the area where the rickshaw-wallahs gathered to wait for passengers. As I was unburdened by any luggage, save for my carry-on bag, I reached the tuk-tuk stand well ahead of Jim and Reggie.

I saw no point in waiting; Jim and Reggie would each need their own rickshaws to fit all the suitcases.

Surveying the scene, I chose the tuk-tuk with the most colorful decoration and approached.

The driver looked at me expectantly.

“Are you available to give me a ride?” I inquired.

He continued to look at me expectantly.

I wasn’t sure he understood a word I said. I pulled out my phone and showed him the address.

“Can you take me here?” I asked, hoping to convey the question through my tone of voice.

“Yes,” he replied.

OK. It would seem the man could understand me.

At this point, the man began to describe the elaborate decorations on the side of the rickshaw in what I assumed was Hindi. I wondered if they had spiritual significance to him. Of course, I couldn’t understand the man's words, nor could I comprehend the strange text he kept pointing at. It was just a bunch of numbers and symbols.

The man’s pride in his rickshaw was evident, almost aggressively so. Wishing to show the proper appreciation, I nodded my head understandingly. This seemed to make him less aggressive.

Still, he stared at me.

Like a fool, I realized we were supposed to be haggling, but I wasn’t playing my part. I reached into my carry-on bag and fished for my stash of Indian currency, grabbing enough bills to look thick but not quite like a stack, and held them out.

The driver’s eyes widened. He glanced around nervously and pushed my hand—and the money—back into the bag.

I assumed I had made an embarrassingly low bid. Hoping to avoid further disgrace, I quickly grabbed more bills—enough cash to qualify as a proper stack—surreptitiously lifting the fistful of money just above the top of my carry-on bag for only the driver to see.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The man exhaled sharply. He looked up at my face, down at the money, then up at my face again in amazement.

With a bob of his head and a look of disbelief, the driver agreed to the ride. He took the stack of money from me, hiding it in a plastic bag. I climbed into the back of the rickshaw to sit directly behind him.

I had just successfully completed my first business transaction in India, and it had gone off flawlessly. I was pretty pleased.

There was only one remaining task: to figure out who I had made the deal with.

“Terrence,” I said slowly, pointing to myself by way of introduction. “I’m Terrence.”

I looked at the driver expectantly.

“Raghu,” he replied, with a slight frown, as if he didn’t enjoy being on a first-name basis with his passengers. Fair enough.

“Shall we go?” I suggested.

“Yes,” he replied.

And then we were off.

Mumbai was a swirl of activity, car horns, and colors. For someone who spends most of their time alone in a camper, like me, the experience was almost a cardiac stress test. As we merged onto more prominent thoroughfares, the chaos diminished. Still, the stress remained, as the little tuk-tuk could only progress very slowly, and every other vehicle—including big trucks—rumbled noisily past, close enough to reach out and touch.

I could sense we were getting farther away from the city center as the development surrounding us became first industrial, then residential, then somewhat sparse.

For hours, my bones rattled on the uncomfortable back seat. I wondered if it would be culturally insensitive to insist we turn around.

Finally, I called out, “Raghu?”

“Yes,” he responded.

“Is this really the way to Martin’s family’s place?”

“Yes,” Raghu replied.

I pondered for a moment, coming to a growing realization.

“Raghu?” I inquired.

“Yes?”

“Is ‘yes’ the only English word you know?”

“Yes,” Raghu confirmed.

I resigned myself to the fact that any further attempt at communication would be pointless. Taking out my phone, I realized the battery was dead. I had watched too many movies on the flights. Sighing, I accepted my fate.

When the sun went down, and visibility was reduced to the little portion of the night illuminated by the feeble beams of the headlights, we pulled off the main highway onto an unpaved country sidetrack. We drove a short distance, coming to a halt on a small patch of dirt along the roadside adjoining a field of millet.

We shared a meal of rice sprinkled lightly with spices, cooked over an open flame. After Raghu cleaned up, he arranged a plastic tarp to serve as his shelter for the night, gesturing that I should sleep in the rickshaw. Apparently, we weren’t going any further until daybreak.

I had a moment of deep depression.

If I had known that staying with my friend Martin’s family would turn out to be this sort of major ordeal, I would never have agreed to the arrangement. But what choice did I have? I crawled into the tuk-tuk and curled up on the tiny uncomfortable back seat. I have little memory of that long night.

Shortly after dawn, our trusty tuk-tuk was again puttering slowly up a highway, clinging to the shoulder as trucks, cars, motorcycles, and older people on bicycles sped past. I sat in the back in a jet-lagged haze, hoping we were nearing our destination, vowing never to leave home again.

———

The village of Paranjapur was facing a crisis.

Two years of poor agricultural yields and a steady exodus of the village’s youth to the cities had left the residents in a state of increasing exasperation. The village council decided that nothing but a long-shot gamble could reverse their fortunes.

What little money the village could cobble together was used to purchase a used tuk-tuk. Careful consideration was paid to its decoration, with the outer shell covered with hand-painted drawings of village life and a price sheet.

The villagers were operating under the assumption that there were plenty of tourists eager to have an authentic Indian farming village experience. City people and foreigners would part with surprising sums of money to come and live simply for a time. The people of Paranjapur were sure of it.

So, the residents decorated one of the village’s empty houses and bought a used tuk-tuk. All that remained was to drum up some business.

A grumpy farmer named Raghu was chosen to drive the village’s tuk-tuk to Mumbai to find the first customer, as he was recovering from a foot injury and could only do limited manual labor.

Not temperamentally suited to the sales game, Raghu struggled mightily. He didn’t come close to winning a customer for a month.

Then, one day, a young American approached him. Unfortunately, they couldn’t communicate. The American held out his phone, but Raghu couldn’t understand what was written on it. It was all just a bunch of numbers and symbols.

Raghu pointed at the markings on the tuk-tuk, describing the village's tourism package and the price to stay there. The foreigner nodded his agreement.

It looked like the village had a customer.

To Raghu’s astonishment, the foreigner then flashed his money about in public, wildly overpaid, and hopped onboard the tuk-tuk.

Raghu had just successfully completed his first sale, and it had gone off flawlessly. He was pretty pleased.

It was a relief to finally be going home, as he and his first customer commenced the five day tuk-tuk trek back to Paranjapur.