Dropping our packs on new ground and making a temporary home, offering up first showers and turns applying aloe vera gel to backs and burns, sharing leftover water and wifi passwords.

Splitting bills and lending rupees, lying our clothes outside over chairs to try and dry in the humidity. Buying bananas that taste like sawdust from a market stall before the early train.

Waking at 4am to a cockroach on the wall and sitting on our ankles side-by-side in the shower tray until it drowned, slowly in the toilet bowl next to the empty packet of jubes.

Turning and heaving our bags onto each other's backs out of the boot of the bus. Fending off touts and tuk tuk drivers with one hand, holding the arm of a backpack in the other.

Comparing bites and burns and talking about broken hearts and fourteen-year-old fragility as we walked down railway tracks towards ancient bridges

(I kept thinking about the guitar chords to 'Stand By Me' and how poignant that movie was but it was too hard to explain).

Sitting in open-air bars with boys drinking arrack on ice as the T20 cricket plays on the widescreen behind us. Going home after two because we are still sleepy from the surf.

Waking up to half-morning alarms to pack our things, our damp washing and plastic-bagged compartments and leave again - in a jeep or a tuk tuk to move and see and go somewhere new.

Perching side-by-side next to greasy men on trains shoving their crotches in our faces and touching our hair, silently shifting our bags onto our legs to cover our browning thighs.

Breaking the foamy surface of a big set and looking around for you doing the same next to me, your board in tow and equally in awe of the power of the waves rolling over us.

Eating breakfast in the quiet while we message our friends through time zones - the papaya I'm leaving because the texture feels weird to me and the spare spoon you use to eat it with.

The bright stars above the dark street by the sea down which we stayed. The minute we met and decided to be friends that turned into weeks and now I am almost gone.

We're lying on our bellies under white mosquito nets scrawling in our journals before I leave tomorrow. We have been up since 6am. My togs are drying on the rack. You are almost asleep.

Friendship is both fleeting and forever.