‘Far out.’ Kurt sits up, blinks, runs his hands through his hair. ‘That was the weirdest dream.’ Then he claps his hands together, beams his big white grin. ‘You ready, amigo?’

He springs onto the floor and begins a long series of push-ups.

Vincent folds his clothes while he waits. Then he counts his money and checks his passport. The thin gold letters on the cover are faintly reassuring. He repacks his backpack. Kurt is doing pull-ups from the doorframe now, panting theatrically, still topless. Annoyed, Vincent leaves him to it, goes and smokes a thin Indian cigarette on the balcony, overlooking a sea of rooftops, grey and half-visible in the smog. Then he goes and shits and feels a bit better.

When Kurt is finally ready, washed and shining, they walk down the corridor to collect Mark and Mitch from the next room. Then they eat breakfast together, standing on the street. Some spicy fried potatoes from a wooden cart. They’re sweating through their shirts already, and a crowd has gathered around to watch them. Vincent shares his food with a little girl and the baby she is carrying on her hip.

Another ciggie squatting beside the road, with a cup of sweet, milky tea.

He’d love a proper fucking coffee.

They throw their brittle ceramic cups onto the road like everyone else, where an ancient woman sweeps them up with a straw broom. There are people everywhere. It’s like an endless river of people.

An old man is sleeping in the dirt to one side, his shrivelled dick exposed to the passing traffic. There’s the smell of petrol and piss and dust and frying oil and smoke.

More kids come to watch them, smiling, laughing.

Kurt commandeers two rickshaws and they get in, he and Vincent in the first, then Mark and Mitch in the second.

Kurt has an address, which his girlfriend, Mary, sent him.

‘17 Koregaon Park,’ he tells the driver.

Seventeen is Vincent’s lucky number. Seventeen was the number of the horse, Transformer, on which he won the deposit for the house in Byron Street. Everything he has, really, he owes to that number.

His luck is starting to change. He can feel it.

Their driver spits into the dirt and says something to the other driver. Then they’re off, swept recklessly along with the traffic, past crowds of pedestrians, men pulling wooden carts, shopkeepers, chickens in cages, dogs, goats, cows, broken huts, street fires, rubbish, all of it rushing past in a whirl. The wind dries their sweat. The sky is pale blue. A few smoky clouds sit low on the horizon. They slip through the gaps in the traffic. Now that they are a part of it, the mess of vehicles begins to make sense.

Kurt has his girlfriend’s sweat-softened letter in his hand. Kurt had shown it to Vincent, in the hotel room the night before.