Describe your most uncomfortable journey ever.
This thread was inspired by the following quote by
EdVallance
The next morning's jeepney ride from Naibwan to San Jose was the worst public transport experience of my life. Or possibly that is not true; the 75-hour bus ride from Lima to Buenos Aires on a tiny non-reclining seat squashed between other passengers on either side of me was worse in terms of the whole experience, although three hours on it would have been fine. But the sheer minute to minute discomfort (which by the end of the trip it would not have been an exaggeration to call agony) of the three-hour Naibwan-San Jose jeepney was really something else. Even four hours would have been far too much: for most of the trip and the whole of the last hour, I had to steel myself against the urge to just get out and find some other way into town.
Through Mindoro's interior with tribes and rebels
Reply to this I took the train at New Year from the town where my girlfriend's parents live back to Kyiv. There were no direct routes so in the middle of the night we had to stop for a couple of hours at a wagon yard to wait for a second train. The snow was knee-deep and the temperature fell to minus 7.
I've spent months living at temperatures twice as far below freezing, but I've never been as cold as I was that night: sitting in a deserted cabin wearing a super-thick jacket on top of a wool coat, hat pulled down over my nose, teeth chattering, freezing air piercing my lungs... when the train finally arrived the conductor was blind drunk, didn't think my girlfriend looked enough like her passport photo, and almost didn't let us on. Thank goodness he did!
J.
Reply to this My most uncomfortable lasted only 20 minutes, but they were 20 long minutes.
I arrived on an island in Uganda. There was a pick up truck that took peolple to various places on the island. They sat in the back of it after telling the driver where they wanted to go.
It was pitch dark and the ride to my guesthouse was worse than a roller coaster ride. It went over rocks, holes, probably tree trunks and f*ck knows what else and up and down bumpy slopes. I tried to keep my bum off the surface because it was so uncomfortable. But, every way I tried to sit or crouch part of my body would violently crash against the side of the pick up. I couldnt really hold onto the sides of it, becuase it was so dark that I didnt know if it would be unsafe to have my arms or finger on the outside. Every 20 seconds or so a branch or bush would slap me sharply accross the face or head. At one stop, I shoved my bag under my bum, to cushion it a bit, so I could maybe bend below the reach of the trees and bushes. Of course, protecting my stuff was impossible, so when I got to the guesthouse, I discovered that all my mosquito coils were broken, and my shampoo was busted, and well not much was left in tact. I was dying to pee, but this was the least uncomforable part of the pick up ride. I had been on a 7 hour boat ride with no toilets on it before the pick up truck ride. There were no ferrys to the islands, in those days.
Reply to this I took a bus from Nairobi to Dar Es Salaam with a friend. It was supposed to be 14 hours, but turned into 18 and a half. We had less than one day of preparation time as my friend didn't get advance notice of her vacation. So, without any Tanzanian money, we got on the bus at 5 a.m. and didn't get off until 11:30 p.m. With only two stops! I think we were zombies by the time we got off - you just zone out for miles. Luckily, I'd bought some mandazi (sweet fried dough) in Nairobi the night before so we had something to eat until the included lunch stop - at 6 p.m. but I decided I've done my stint for overland Africa travel - it's planes next time.
Reply to this 7 of us squeezed into one rickshaw to go from Varanasi to Sarnath. Because I was the smallest I was nominated to sit up on the dividing bar between the front and back of the rickshaw, which meant that my head banged against the roof every time we went over a bump in the road which was pretty much all the time; and every time the driver braked sharply to avoid crashing - again, almost all the time - I had to hang on for dear life to not go flying through the front windscreen. Many kingfisher beers were had that night to aid recovery!
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