Bus Journeys - from Jane

 Bus Journeys in India...

I must confess, that when I complain about the use of rural bus services in the UK, it is always given a little perspective if I consider other, less comfortable journeys.  My main beef is having to suffer over 16 hours of travelling between Monday and Friday in order to travel a total of 150 miles; 15 miles each way Monday to Friday. As I suffer from motion sickness, which adds a further 5-10 hours of recovering to this total, it is quite an ordeal. However it doesn't seem to apply so much if I am in situations where I have to overcome extremes of discomfort.

I have spent 17 hours and more on single coach journeys in India where the coaches seem to be built for midgets, and the nausea was diminished by the excitement of dressing in a Saree and chappells (thonged sandals)with a blanket around and over my head.  With my dark complexion and hair I passed as an Indian woman, so I would not be molested by opportunist police or border guards boarding the bus, who sometimes take their responsibilities of stop and search a little literally, and who were probably looking for Shiv Sena or Muslim Rebels anyway.  The seats on these buses are like our local
country buses - zero leg room - but as I weighed in at a little over 8 stone in '95 (50 - 55kg) as opposed to 13 - 13st10lb, or 85 - 88kg now, I could fit in fairly unobtrusively.  The buses lurched so much that it was necessary to lean forward and rest one's head on one's arms on the back of the seat in front, in order not to have the stomach wrenched about with every dent in the rutted road winding up to the foothills from the capital, Delhi.  The bus would leave at seven or eight in the evening, after dark, would drive through the night and I would arrive in the Kumaon the following afternoon.

By the time dawn broke, the flat landscape of the brown and dusty plains would have given way to the more interesting undulations of the mist- wreathed foothills, where the low scrub vegetation and shacks lining the route would be replaced by winding narrow hairpin bends, occasionally menaced by oncoming TATA lorry transport vehicles, whose requirement for the inside, cliff-wall-hugging lane had our bus (on another such journey) at one point on the outside of a bend, hanging with the front nearside wheel over the cliff.  We were at the edge of the ledge upon which the road was friably perched, lurching at a crazy angle above thousands of feet of sheer mountain-side drop, threatening any moment to slide into the abyss...

Of course, the curious nature of the Indians required that the entire
bus-load of passengers, with the exception of myself and companion, should get up from their seats and move over to the already tilting edge, thereby increasing the weight on that side, in order to peer down into the depths and possibly to survey the scattered graveyard of previously fallen buses complete with victims' remains, and the prospect of their own demise, with a little oriental equanimity.  Less stoically inclined, however, my preference was to keep my seat on the far right at the back, in the hopes that my paltry counterbalance should provide the necessary few grains of sand to balance the fulcrum onto the road side.

The marauding lorry having passed, the driver turned and bid the passengers resume their seats, whilst, thankfully possessing rear-wheel drive, he let the engine rev and scream as it attempted to reverse back onto the road, with the fourth wheel at last being dragged back over the ledge with a satisfying lurch and crunch.  Since the entrance and exit door was over this wheel, there was no way out except through the emergency window hatch by my seat. I don't think I could have borne the responsibility, however, had I attempted to scramble out, only to find that the slight decrease in the weight that my frame provided over the back axle had resulted in the final slippage into oblivion for all the other passengers. I think that was one of
the most spectacular of my NDE's, or near-death-experiences.

The sparsely interspersed wayside stops were a little more difficult for the women travellers than for the men. As there would be no shelter or toileting facilities nearby, it was necessary to walk some way away from the bus in order to conduct these procedures unobserved - and on one occasion, I was only able to regain my seat due to the ministrations of another passenger who prevented the driver from accelerating away in the middle of nowhere with my pack and belongings on board.  I always kept my passport, money and
tickets in a body-belt, but the other essentials were no less necessary to my survival.  Since these infrequent stops were at least four or five hours apart, it was imperative to take the opportunities when offered, whether immediately required or not.  The same applied to stops for chai or fruit from a wayside stall - it was safer than drinking water.

Memories of bus journeys such as these, the gritted determination to forget all normal requirements for sleep, food, water, bodily functions, and to endure as best one could, made me aware of the privations of animals on long journeys, and it was with surprising joy that I accepted this 'tapasia', or trial of suffering, as a challenge to the outrageous slings and arrows of fortune, and learned to laugh at adversity.  In the UK, however, the native mindset is to grumble, which makes the slightest inconvenience harder to withstand.

The roads were fairly regularly impeded by intermittent avalanches, due to the youthful vigour of the upthrusting Himalayan mountains, and that of the streams and waterfalls which would take the swiftest route down the mountainside across the ledges by which any traffic might pass. On encountering large areas of rubble, the passengers would dismount, and the driver and ticket collector would attempt to clear the worst of the blockage, then to drive across and wait for the passengers to re-embark. 

Any such theatre would be closely observed by the inevitable local
bystanders, their buffaloes or other animals such as sheep or even the odd mule, or by wild 'bunder' (monkeys) or langur hoping to find the remains of an impromptu picnic. The observers would appear as if by magic from completely wild, afforested roadsides with no evidence of human habitation nearby. It was surprising how peopled the unpopulated areas were.

The avalanches were usually accompanied by swiftly moving water, and it was sometimes necessary to pick one's way very carefully through difficult terrain.  The whole exercise would take on the flavour of an adventure, and the idea of complaining against the vagaries of nature did not occur.  Rather the response was to offer full-hearted thanks that the cause of the delay had not taken place while the bus was in the vicinity.  The humbling experience of being a mere human pitted against all that Nature could devise puts the idea of Local Government and Nanny State into a very distant, and microscopic perspective, whereas in the UK it can become macro-size and impose quite untenable conditions of its own. The heartfelt delight of
freedom from such manipulations resulted in a deep reverence for Life, and a sense of belonging far removed from arbitrary political structures.

In retrospect, perhaps my travel sickness, rarely apparent in the
aforementioned situations, was rather a 'nausee' or 'ennui' induced by the banal and controlling society which has such empty and self-advancing goals, which is so divorced from respect for and celebration of the Nature, concerned only with exploitation, denudation, and profit. Perhaps the travel sickness is not that at all, but a certain mind-weariness of western ethics, which can only be cured by reflecting on the beauty of Seasons, of trees, of sky, the scented breeze, and the memories that these convey..

The music is 'The Long Way Home' sourced from an internet midi music site

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