All the Roadrunning

Yesterday we left the Kinnaur Valley, making our way straight across the state of Himachal Pradesh to the Western Ranges of the Himalayas.

At the bus station in Kalpa, every time a bus arrived, a crowd of eager villagers would grab all of their belongings and rush to board it, pushing and shoving each other with an accepted level of necessary aggression. They fought for the best seats, argued over who arrived first and crammed into every inch of space. Moments later they all disembarked the bus, re-grabbing their belongings, and headed back to the benches and floor space of the bus station. Wrong bus.

This scenario repeated itself several times without it ever occurring to the two dozen people to ask the bus driver where he was headed before they involved themselves in yet another pointless battle. Buses pulled into the station that clearly said, in both Hindi and English ¨Destination: Jammu & Kashmir¨ yet the rush would still take place, even though the crowd was trying to get to the state of Haryana, some seven hundred kilometers in the opposite direction of Kashmir.

Finally, when our bus pulled into the station, my friend and I pushed our way right into the middle of the madness. We fought hard to secure two good seats near the front, sending a solid elbow into the face of an elderly man and throwing a small child out of the window. After two minutes the battleground was littered with bodies, some in seats, others on the floor, others hanging out the door and the child still crying on the ground outside. I was not sure whether or not to urinate around our area in order to claim our territory once and for all. (Ok, not all of the above is true, I didn’t elbow the man!)

The bus departed Kalpa at 8:30am, taking us on a typically torturous journey to the mountain junction town of Rampur, where we arrived at 2:00pm. The bus to our next destination, Dharamsala, departed at 8pm, which gave us enough time to get a day room at a budget hotel, have a quick nap and eat one of the best meals I have had the good fortune to consume during my life. Let´s just say that the biryani, vegetable korma and butter naan, served in the luxurious hotel restaurant overlooking the Sutlej River, almost brought me to tears. I love food. And naturally, I really love really good food. This meal, which only cost 200 rupees ($5 USD), possessed that rare power that instantly dissipates any negativity and brings one miles closer to enlightenment.

In the end though, this meal proved to be the last happy moment that I would enjoy for a considerable amount of time.

The bus departed on time at 8pm, after I went and pleaded with the bus station manager to find my friend and I two seats on the already full vehicle. After some strong begging, the man walked on to the bus, made some forceful demands in Hindi and suddenly two seats opened up. Where else can you simply make two empty seats appear on an overcrowded bus? Anything is possible here if you know how to play the game.

All was well…for the first sixty minutes. After one hour of winding around the mountains, the bus stopped in a tiny village consisting of a few wooden shops and local dhabas (eateries). The ticket man on the bus yelled out something and all the passengers immediately disembarked. I looked at him and wagged my head to display my lack of understanding as to why we had stopped. He simply repeated his statement, which sounded like ¨Harfal jaga a roodle dee¨, while making a circular motion with his hands. That was a good enough explanation for me so we joined the others outside. And then the bus drove off, leaving all fifty of us passengers in the middle of the road.

It turned out that there was a puncture in one of the tires, but go figure, we did not have a spare tire. And so, the bus had to turn around and return to Rampur to get a new one. In the meantime, as the nighttime temperatures continued to drop, we all sat on a stone wall in the middle of this dark village for two and a half hours, wondering if the bus would ever return or if this was just a sick game played by the driver.

When it did return everyone hopped on board quickly, eager to make up for lost time. But once we were all finally back in our seats ready to go, the driver turned off the engine and went into a restaurant with the ticket man where they proceeded to indulge in a thirty minute dinner. How considerate of them.

The following eight hours involved traveling along an unpaved, dirt and rock path in the middle of the night, a crude road carved out of high cliffs that seemed to bitterly reject the presence of such a symbol of civilization. Had I been four feet tall the short seat back would have made it quite easy to sleep, but unfortunately being of normal size I could only sit and stare into the darkness. Dozens of Indian heads bobbed and bounced around me in a state of semi-consciousness, somehow remaining attached to their necks despite the constant jerking motion of the bus.

At five in the morning, after another hour delay due to another tire puncture, we finally arrived into the market town of Mandi. Our arrival here brought a moment of relief as the bus emptied for a brief moment and we changed to what appeared to be more comfortable seats. Unfortunately, after the bus filled up once again, we realized that these new seats were actually much worse, with an amount of leg room suitable only for someone without any legs at all. But alas, we only had to travel for six more hours and the road was paved! Out of sheer exhaustion, we did nod off from time to time, although the constant lung clearing spitting of the man directly behind me ensured that a deep sleep remained an impossibility.

As the dawn became actual morning, when our knees had lost sensation, our neck muscles forced into permanent spasm and our heads bruised from smashing into the metal wall, we reached our destination. The entire journey took 26 ½ hours, not exactly what one would describe as a reasonable amount of time to cover the not too great distance of 160 miles.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 8:47 am and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.