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Today Paul, Jane, Ringo, and Maureen landed in Delhi. While John and George had managed to make the trip mostly unmolested, this second Beatles party was met by the usual throng of press vultures, in addition to Mal Evans and a chap named Raghvendra from the Maharishi’s entourage. Says The Beatles Bible,
Starr was suffering pain in his arm following inoculation injections, and the party set off for a hospital. Their driver, however, lost his way and drove down a dead end in a field, along with the press convoy. One local reporter eventually led them to the hospital.
So after a 20-hour flight and a trip to the hospital, the weary travelers finally set off for Rishikesh. One assumes that their journey was similar to the previous party’s taxi, Jeep, and donkey odyssey, but Paul managed to sleep through at least some of it.
There was an Indian driver and Raghvendra from the camp in front and me and Jane Asher in the back…. In my twilight zone of sleeping it sounded like they were talking Liverpool. If you listened closely, it so nearly slid into it. There was like a little segue into very fast colloquial Liverpool. And I was thinking, Uh, where the fuck am I? What? Oh, it’s Bengali, and I would just drop off again. “Yabba yabba, are yer comin’ oot then, lad?” It was a strange little twilight experience.
At one point I aspired to write a screenplay about The Beatles’ time in India, and this would make a good dream sequence … maybe incorporating some Yellow Submarine–style animation. I’ll leave it to you to create one in your head.