In Bombay, Palin finds himself a week behind Phileas Fogg. After getting a quick shave from a blind barber under a tree and seeing a snake charmer's cobra, he is able to get a train ticket to Madras in south-eastern India. Before leaving Bombay, he visits an astrologer who, after giving him a chart for a baby to be born to one of his referees, Robert Hewison, tells him he will complete the journey a day ahead of schedule.
Palin then embarks on the Indian Railways express line called the "Southern Express" for Madras in Tamil Nadu province. On the way, it stops in Pune, where Palin talks about his father winning two rowing cups there in 1953. In Madras, he has difficulty finding a connecting boat to Singapore. Eventually, an "...Anglo-German-Indo-Yugoslav agreement the UN would have been proud of" was reached and Palin sets off on a Yugoslavian freighter, eleven days behind. The agreement allowed only Palin and the cameraman Nigel Meakin to travel aboard the ship, and on condition that they worked as deckhands. That meant that Palin had to take a "crash course in sound recording" so they could film aboard the ship. Arriving in Singapore, Palin worries whether or not his connecting boat from Singapore has sailed. If it had, it would have been impossible to complete the journey in eighty days.
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