Are we nearly there yet?

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After ascending Mt Kelimutu for sunrise to see the summit lakes in the clarity of the early morning, I returned to Moni village to get ready for the bus west. By the time I left, thick cloud was already enveloping the summit.

Thick clouds also enveloped me a little later in the day - clouds of foul acrid smoke as my fellow bus passengers puffed away at cigarettes made from pickled cow dung mixed with cloves.

On its own, that would have been enough to make a 12 hour bus journey really quite unpleasant. It was, however, not on its own. Oh no. Not even slightly.

Wedged between several hundred kilograms of rice and a trio of chainsmokers, in a seat that was so close to the one in front that I would have had to wrap my legs round my ears to fit in even if there hadn't been another sack of rice where my feet were meant to go (and there was), driving along a road that made Timor's seem smooth and straight - I would have been tempted to wonder why I was putting myself through this.

As it was, I couldn't concentrate on anything because there was a speaker mounted about six inches behind my head playing angst-ridden slightly misogynistic cheesy rock music at ear-splitting volume. This only got worse - it switched to a selection of the world's worst music before settling on an Indonesian singer with a voice like a foghorn being struck by lightning and a backing track that was like having razor blades pounded into my ears. The driver loved this one so much he played the tape 5 times.

I'm afraid the stunning scenery didn't make up for it for very long, partly because I was in the centre of the bus away from the windows, so I had to peer through clouds of smoke and dirty windows to see what glimpses of it showed through the thick roadside vegetation.

It got gradually worse throughout the day as they let more passengers on, so there was nowhere to put half the bags that were in the cabin, and people were lying on the bags of rice that filled the aisle. The road got steadily worse as we headed west, so we were often reduced to a first-gear crawl through piles of rocks and mud.

With only three stops - two of one minute each and another of 30 minutes - my circulation suffered badly - I only had two possible (and only very slightly different) seating positions, each of which cut off the blood to one or other foot.

I actually cannot find a positive thing about the entire journey, apart from arriving alive. It was 12 hours of purest, distilled torture. I'm as certain that this was the worst journey of my life as I'm certain that I never want anything remotely similar to happen again.

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Comments

[El]

Hope that you have recovered
Sounds like hell. Hope that you have had sufficient time to recover now.