We stood there in the field of flowers looking down on the town. It was the first time we had been still for days. Like we knew we had to keep moving. We were there for Pushkar. To see the spectacle. To be part of it. We didn’t want to tramp like daytrippers and then escape to some westernised retreat where we could wash off the day. We wanted it to get under our skins and alter our DNA. I looked at her as I passed her the remains of the joint. G’s face was bathed in the golden sun of an Indian afternoon. The sun was refusing to surrender to the twilight. There were no shadows. She was a picture of purity humming in warm light that seemed holy. Holy moly! Her hair danced around her face as a breeze swum through the flowers. I noticed that one eye was greener than the other. She caught me looking at her and – dreamy and shy - smiled.  
“What would Eve Layton do?” she asked me leaning in as she said it. I had a fair idea.
We fell into the flowers kissing hard. She reverted to German, gasping and laughing, her voice turning guttural as the words fell out. The smell of the yellow flowers mixed with the smell of her hair and skin. Both of us delighted that it was this easy.
I was kissing her breast – my mouth full of the scent of her, the sweat mixed with musk, mixed with India that had implanted into her DNA –I had my face and hands full of her, but my mind started thinking about fruit. Why do we do that? I mean, this was a long-held fantasy of mine. To have uncomplicated, sweet, passionate sex with a stranger at a trippy festival in India. Well, in any exotic locale really. And there I was, lost in the hazy sunlight, lying in amongst the flowers, lost in the moment with a German girl who’s name escapes me and I start thinking about fruit. Not just fruit, though. I started to piece together how many sexual analogies there were that involved fruit. The first was, of course, the uber-sexy, as-moist-as-an-over-excited-vagina Mango. Then there are peaches – shaped like a young girl’s arse and bratty and pouty. Thinking about the peach made me grab G-girl’s arse with greater intensity. I then thought about how women are shaped like pears. Pear-shaped backs dripping with passionfruit. My mind was lost to fruit. I was not, it would seem, staying in the moment. I avoided thinking about bananas. I just don’t swing that way.
The sex was urgent – clawing and physical. She pushed me down and ground down hard like she wanted all of me inside her. I can’t remember such wetness and urgency. She had a tattoo of Casper the Friendly Ghost just inside the curve of her right hip. He danced and looked as happy as he does. We were gasping for air while kissing lips, ears, necks, any skin we could find. The sound of Pushkar wound around us – a swirling arabesque of music, singing, shouting, chanting and the urgent cries of animals. We pushed harder and harder as if we could come out the other side.
Everything slowed and all at once I thought (of all things!) of a Tears for Fears song, Cold. Warm and squishy, it is a song that belies its name. I don’t know why I thought of it. If I was art directing the moment, I would have preferred something by Nusrat Fateh Aleh Khan. His sinewy vocal gymnastics were much more suited to the occasion.
She lay on the ground panting, my face in her hair. Our skin cooling as the breeze danced over the sweat. I rolled over beside her and felt the kiss of the flowers on my back. The sweat on her skin lit up her goosebumps like a Christmas tree. The curve of her arse mirrored the sand dunes down behind the town. A small lake of sweat gathered in the small of her back. It pulsed with the vibrations from the festival. In the background, the holy lake throbbed with energy as the wheel of people kept spinning round and round.