Postcards from INDIA The bus ride

Hey everybody! I'm way behind on my updates. tough luck! This one turned into a bit of a short story... The bus starts pulling out of the station with Lisa still in the station 'washroom'. Of course by washroom i mean a festering, filthy place from which you emerge dirtier than you entered. I yell to the driver that there was still a passenger missing, and amazingly, he stops. We were told the bus leaves at 4:30 pm, but it turns out it leaves at 4. Lisa gets on, looking flustered. We're on the bus from Haridwar to Manali, a 15-hour overnight ordeal awaiting us. We're the only 2 westerners on the bus, except maybe for the 2 hare-krishnas, but their heads are shaved making it difficult to tell. We drive off, the bus's own diesel exhaust blowing up into its windows. Holding my breath, I'm glued to the scenery outside... You'd think when driving along India's roads that the entire economy is driven by roadside stands. There's no department or grocery stores here - in fact, the largest store is 14 feet wide. Most of these stores sell a random assortment of junk, sprinkled with somewhat useful items. Out of a collection of any 100 stands, they contain anything you'd ever want to buy, as long as it weighs less than 2 pounds. Some stands are so small and pathetic you'd wonder who would possibly buy anything there - a shabby little shack with a dusty guy sitting in it, selling some dusty breath mints, dusty key-chains, and dusty coconut biscuits. Often the meager stand will have a tarp set up behind it - the family home. Even out in the middle of what should be nowhere, there are roadside stands. When these stands reach a critical density, and the air becomes un-breatheable, it means you're in a city. The cities are packed with people, vehicles, and everything else I've described in my other emails. By sheer density, it becomes a lively place. It seems like every night is a carnival - everybody and everything is out on the streets, talking, eating, dodging traffic, sleeping, buying stuff, playing, shooing animals... fires burst up from the food vendor's grills, and street vendors walk around trying to sell useless trinkets, which people seem to actually want. The soup, the plasma this is all contained in is the dust and smog. Busses and motor bikes all belch out half-combusted oil and diesel, making the air noxious. To compound this, at night people begin fires to get rid of garbage and cook their food. The air as far as your stinging eyes can see (which isn't very far) is thick with acrid smoke of every kind, even far out from the city. The dry climate and constantly pounded earth kicks large amounts of dust into the air as well, making it worse. Everything here is coated with a layer of dirty, dusty grime. The guy in the row behind us starts puking horribly out the window. Lisa later points out that what I thought was dried mud splashed on my window was also vomit. We pass a factory belching black smoke from its chimneys. Half the factory looks like an afterthought, its corrugated metal walls poorly assembled, never at right-angles. Things here are BUILT dilapidated. Really, they are. It is almost impossible to tell apart a building which is being constructed from one that's falling apart. Spilling out from the factory is a shanty-town, probably where the employees live. The conditions are squalid, horrible, and I try to convince myself that this is what happens in a place where the population gets beyond the breaking point. I wonder if this factory is making something we buy at Macy's... It gets dark, and our bus won't be arriving until morning. I have my arsenal of tactics to get a good night's sleep including an inflatable butt pad to sit on, and one of those inflatable neck pillows which wraps around to keep your head upright. To supplement this I utilize pretty much everything in my backpack to: a) pad myself from the bus's many hard, sharp metal edges my poor body is being pressed against. b) Wrap around me and use things to prop me up to create a kind of immobilizing body cast to keep me upright and kink-free while I sleep. My head still rolls around too much so I stuff underwear into the shoulders of my jacket, creating shoulder pads to supplement the neck pillow. I look ridiculous, and the whole thing doesn't even work - I barely get more than 10 minutes of sleep at a go. Lisa does a little better because she has me to lean against, but she's constantly defending herself against her neighbor, and older Indian guy who keeps putting his hand on her leg. The bus heads into the mountains, and the constant swerving, honking, potholes and hard braking, and generally insane Indian mountain-road bus driving style doesn't help the sleep situation. Busses pass each other at full speed around winding corners with barely inches to spare, which makes you simultaneously mortified and impressed. The air is gradually getting colder, and blasts onto me through openings in the windows, which don't close properly. I stuff my socks into the cracks like caulking, trying not to touch the dried puke. Finally the pale blue light of morning begins to silhouette the spectacular gorge we now realize we're traveling up. Shear rock walls shoot hundreds of feet up on each side, and occasionally (gulp) hundreds of feet down. Occasionally the gorge widens and the river disappears into a rocky boulder field. Even here, on the boulder-strewn bottom of this gorge there are hap-hazardly constructed shanty factories, in a scene which looks straight out of a sci-fi movie. Bright florescent light shines through the cracks between the corrugated metal walls, as if the factories were ready to burst with glowing, evil energy. It's very eerie. Our bus pulls over in a trashy little town and the ticket taker starts yelling at us, "Hurry, change bus for Manali, Hurry! HURRY!" Manali is our destination but we were unaware we would have to change busses. At this point I'm half-buried alive in my uncontained belongings and I scramble to get my things together, with the ticket-taker scolding us. "HURRY! HURRY!!!" We exit the bus, me holding half my belongings under my arms, underwear spilling out of my shoulders. The bus drives off with my socks still crammed in its pukey windows. We board the other bus and collapse on the back row of seats which is mercifully vacant, and I lay down to try to sleep. However, it is well known that the back of the bus is the worst place to be - the rear axle of the bus acts as a pivot, amplifying bumps in the road at the back. It takes about 4 minutes of being launched into the air and crashing back into the seat, occasionally landing in the foot well to realize I won't be getting any sleep, but at least it's managed to put Lisa into a fit of hysterics. A poor-looking man with one bad eye joins us at the back for the ass-spanking, and although he doesn't speak English, we discover the word 'ouch!' transcends the language barrier. All this bouncing around is making me have to go to the bathroom in all sorts of disturbingly immediate ways. In the 15 hours of bus ride we've only pulled over 3 times for a pit stop, and most of those were in the first 3 hours. A man gets onto the bus through the heavy door at the back and slams it shut. Suddenly seeming concerned, he opens it again. His thumb had been at the hinge of the door, and when it closed it snapped off the first digit of his thumb and crushed it, like it was caught in a giant garlic press. He yells something to the driver, then just stands there examining his thumb, the white meaty bone protruding, and hanging from it are the crushed remnants of his first digit. He doesn't quite seem to know what to make of his it, like it's not really his. His lack of reaction is as disturbing as his mangled thumb. Now, on top of all my excretory woes I need to puke as well. The man yells again, the bus stops and he jumps off. We drive away with him just standing there in the street, staring at his hand, until he disappears from view. It seems to sum up this whole episode - a sickening, deplorable situation taken with numb acceptance. The poor man next to me engages me in a mimed conversation, involving a lot of pointing to our thumbs, looking queasy, and nodding. He digs around in his little bag, pulls out a large, yellow pen and presents it to me as an offering of friendship. I accept it graciously, not quite sure whether I'm supposed to give something back or not. I'm touched. He exits the bus and we give each other furious goodbyes. After this uncomfortable, bizarre, disturbing voyage, the poor man's small act of kindness and generosity towards me, a stranger, somehow manages to restore balance to the horribly lop-sided universe. I realize, after much recent doubt, I'm strangely happy to be in India. peace, al P.S. everything is MUCH better now back to manali page