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Published: July 23rd 2006
23.7.06
Whoever said, and it was someone at sometime in my life, that traveling India was easier than South America was lying. They clearly hadn’t been to one or either place. I am now three weeks into my trek around Rajasthan and I can honestly say that my nerves and standards of hygiene have never been so sorely tested.
We have just arrived in Mount Abu after traveling all night. We left Jaisalmer at 3pm yesterday on the bus and at about midnight we arrived in Jodphur to change buses to go to Mount Abu. We were told by our nice man at the hotel in Jaisalmer that we would get off bus 1 and get onto our connecting bus which would be parked “IMMEDIATELY ADJACENT” to bus 1, it would be a simple case of transferring our luggage from one vehicle to another. He even did hand movements pressing his palms together to demonstrate just how close the two buses would be when we had to do the transfer. But no, no. We got off the bus in the middle of a scratchy patch of earth which was doing its best impression of being a bus station. There were a few dogs and cows milling about and the usual throng of raggedly clad men screaming in Hindi and there was no other bus anywhere in sight. Doing what you absolutely shouldn’t do at anytime we had to put ourselves in the hands of a rickshaw driver who just said “yes, yes, Mount Abu, yes, come, 5km”.
After checking with as many people as we could before leaving with him, the booking office at Jodphur bus station, the driver of bus 1, we established that wherever the connecting bus was going from it wasn’t going from here. The rickshaw sped us off into the chaos of Jodphur before dumping us at another patch of earth, this time boasting quite a few buses and more closely resembling a bus station, and after the driver dashed into the booking office here and dashed back, told us that THAT was our bus. Getting out of the rickshaw, our bags were then literally rammed into the boot of the bus and we got on and the engine fired up immediately. God knows what would have happened if we hadn’t arrived when we did, as the bus was on its way out of there and we only just made it.
Imagine you are in closed sardine tin. You have just entered through a small hole by the ring pull (the only opening) and now with the lid not far above your head, you push your way through the dark and thronging mass of all the other sardines until you get to the back of the tin where there is a small enclave which if you squat back and then shunt yourself to the right you can slide into and there is a seat there. Well this is as close as damn it to the reality of our connecting bus. I sat at the back my right side wedged against the window, the grey metal ceiling 1ft above me (I had the sleeper bunks above my head), Rob wedged into my left side, our hand luggage (numerous) wedged around my feet, and all about me in the remaining spaces a close, suffocating, throbbing heat.
I started to drip sweat (I mean drip, this word is not just for effect, even the backs of my hands were sweating), but was so relieved that we had moved off so quickly I didn’t fret too much. Then we stopped 5 minutes later, I don’t know why or what we were waiting for, but I sat in my hole in the tin for half an hour, outside the window it was close and still, I boiled alive and went off my head. It was the kind of heat where you pull your vest up to wipe your face and don’t care if you’re flashing your chest to all the locals. My skirt, my vest were wet, as Rob so eloquently put it, “oh look you’ve got breast sweats”. Thank you Robert. What was worse was that we didn’t sit still for half an hour, no, every five minutes or so the driver cranked up the engine as if to leave, raising my hopes and spirits as I began to feel the tinkling of a breeze through the window only to stop again after driving two yards. I am not joking he did this about 6 times before we actually left. In addition to this he kept pressing ‘play’ on his Hindi chart music before stopping it 20 seconds later. It was like being in some surreal, nightmarish fairground ride or form of torture designed to break your sanity as quickly as possible.
I sat in my box for the next six hours while we journeyed to Mount Abu. Thank God I slept quite a bit. In fact I think it was my body’s reaction to trauma and I was passing out, you know how torture victims after they’ve been beaten a few times fall unconscious so their body doesn’t have to register the pain. I have forgotten to mention that 20km before we hit Jodphur we blew a tire which left us all sitting at the side of the road in the heat and dark while two Indian men who didn’t look like they had the manpower to change a fuse wrestled with the wheel and tightened the bolts. I was feeling so uneasy. I had actually said before we left SA that I would not go on an Indian bus as I thought they were so dodgy, so it didn’t take much to raise my nerves. Rob also helpful as ever, kept saying “God we were lucky the bus didn’t go out of control”. Yes, weren’t we.
Anyway, we arrived in Mount Abu at 5am this morning and were dumped on the road with not a taxi in site in the dripping rain. Luckily there was a man in uniform who managed to summon a jeep for us from somewhere which took us to our hotel. I arrived at the hotel, so desperate for a shower and privacy I was willing to do something drastic, only to find our room would not be ready until check out at 9am as the hotel was full. Four hours! Four f***ing hours of sitting in their excuse for a restaurant on a hard bench at a hard table, waiting.
Then I started to itch. The itching didn’t stop. I looked down to find three massive bites on my leg which had appeared within minutes. I itched my hip and felt the lump beneath my skirt, it was so big. I looked up and sure enough there were mosquitos EVERYWHERE. We dosed ourselves with repellent but I actually just had to spread mine on because all the bare bits of me, legs, arms and feet were covered in a layer of dust and sand that meant rubbing in felt like an exfoliation treatment.
I'm not trying to be ungrateful as truly this is a life changing experience, but when for the past six times you've gone to the loo its been in a horrendous public Asian loo with sweating walls and a rancid smell of flys and dirt, or squatting outside beside a bush or falling down house, and each time you’ve somehow peed on your dirt covered ankles, and now you’ve just gone to the LOO and not had any loo roll and had to use your BOOKMARK, it just becomes too much. Really too much. I am now in the internet room at our hotel, still waiting for our room, it’s 8.30am, having done coffee, chai, porridge and the whole of the Hindi Times in the restaurant.
We have met a nice dutch couple in the restaurant who have just told us that because of the rain the forests in Mount Abu are too green and dense to hike because there are lots of snakes and you can’t see the bears approaching. I guess its another round of Jain temples for us then. I’m going to be an expert in Jain temples by the time I get back, they have followed me like a bad smell since Bombay. Not that I’m complaining I can see myself on Clifton beach a year from now, thinking ‘how I wish I’d appreciated those Jain temples while I was in India, because my gosh, what I wouldn’t give to go and visit one now”.
Anyway that’s it, our journey to Mount Abu. The bus trip saw Rob and I pledging to each other that whatever the cost we would not under any circumstances take another bus, it was the train or a taxi. We have just found out (the nice Dutch couple again), that there are no trains out of Mount Abu. I’m sorry my head just can’t go there right now.
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Mary Laurie
non-member comment
My amazing children
Sitting in a fragrant (by comparison) London (french doors open to scented garden) I read your bus journey with increasing horror. But you did it! What a triumph! I am soproud of you! Expecting to take delivery of your South African suitcase via Iwona today. Does this make you happy? First appointment with the priest who will marry you MondayAugust 21 (my birthday!) 11.00am. I love you both, Mummy