**pic and video added 5/11, post complete**
The bus was supposed to be air-conditioned and it really wasn’t. My full-recline seat? Yeah, it wasn’t either. I was in the last seat of the bus, which is a bench, and the back is angled at approximately 90 degrees from the seat. The seats were old, dirty, and heavily upholstered. So were the drapes. It was a tinder box with no toilet. And at the moment I was the only one on it.
I put my pack next to me on the seat (as several people had told me your stuff is relatively likely to get stolen on a bus) and I thought, well, if I can’t recline, at least I can lay down on the bench seat. That is until they put four more people in my seat with me. There are now 5 people on the bench that I thought was mine. And the bus starts filling up from there.
We are whizzing through traffic and slamming on the brakes and then crashing with headlong ignorance over the speed bumps. This seems to be typical Delhi driving. However, I hadn’t yet experienced it on a bus. I don’t know if you rode a bus to school when you were a kid, but the last seat was always the funnest seat to have because you bounced all around. Well, that’s cool when you’re 9, but not when you’re 37 with a back history. That first hit made me catch a full 10 inches of air before slamming down on my spine. Ummm. Wow. That sucked. I don’t know how in the hell I’m going to make it to Rishikesh. When I’m at the ready, I can have my legs out and flexed like springs that will give me a softer landing, but my legs don’t have 7.5 hours of strength like that. And they don’t work when I’m sleeping either.
The way I’m squished in there (now with my pack between my legs), every time we hit a bump, the end of my left shoulder on the collar bone, smashes into the top of the window casing. Every time. (A couple days later, and it still is sore).
The bus goes around and around and around for maybe an hour and a half picking up people in different parts of Delhi, and every major place we stop, a full-on argument ensues with a male passenger who just gets on. Indians like to argue. One guy gets on about halfway through the pickups and keeps saying something about “gringo” and “americano” and he has a definite problem with me. He is belligerent and I can’t tell if he’s been drinking, but it would seem like it. He is getting physical with the one of the three guys that sits up front to drive and tend to the people/vehicle. This guy is big for an Indian, and he is built. He keeps looking back at me, and keeps saying the “gringo” and “americano” stuff. I wish I could understand Hindi, but don’t need to in order to understand the tension inside this prison is escalating. If it comes at me, he’s going to have to get through a bunch of people first because it’s so crowded. But if he does, I’m gonna have to take the first shot and make it count, because this guy could really put a hurting on me.
After about a half an hour, he starts cooling down and I don’t end up having any further issue with him.
I was looking for the window as the AC was non-existent (though technically “on”), but couldn’t find a way to open it. The guy next to me opened it. The conductor yelled at me, which I ignored, and he came back and shut the window, which I re-opened when he got to the front. At the next stop, he yelled at me again through the window (he was outside), but I didn’t even make the attempt to close it. Wasn’t happening, buster. It’s like a sauna in here, except that the instead of water on hot rocks, it’s the sweat dripping from the guys hairy arms and legs pressed up against me, and landing on my sizzling skin.
At some point in there, I fall asleep, as I was beyond ready to do when I was at the travel agent booth, but prevented up until I couldn’t hold out any longer. A couple of hours into the actual journey outside of Delhi, and the guy up front starts talking, but all I can hear that I recognize is “chai” and I assume this is a refreshment stop and bathroom break. I get up, leave my pack because there are people sleeping around it(including on the floor of the bus) and I think the likelihood of it going missing at this point is low. I walk outside, and the men have spread like ants and are urinating anywhere they feel like it. The whole place is a urinal.
When in Rome… I find a piece of earth that I figure could use a bit of nitrogen and after a bit of stage fright, get the job done and back into the clink.
I fall asleep shortly thereafter, woken up only about every few minutes to lighter sleep state when the combination of the driver’s superior skill and the excellent road maintenance combine to slam my shoulder into the window casing.
When I was in the travel agent’s booth, I asked if the bus stopped any place else or just Rishikesh, because I had a problem on the train to Varanasi trying to figure out when to get off. He said it just stops at Rishikesh, but there have now been multiple stops since we got into the area and it started getting a little bit light out. I sense that these are not Rishikesh, and then I get a “message” that the next stop is mine. Ok. We stop again, and I say “Rishikesh?” and the guy near me says, “Wait. All” Which meant, the driver wasn’t really at the stop yet, but that many of the people would also be getting off there, but yes, we were in Rishikesh.
The bus finally stops a couple minutes later. And before I can even get up, a tout is on the bus and has said to me, “Laxman Jhula come with me.” Laxman Jhula is indeed the area of Rishikesh I want, like a backpacker area, but I’m not going with him. I get out and there are people at the top of a sizeable set of stairs. I go up to see what we have, and there is the Ganges only I can’t see any trash in it (there is some pollution already in it, I have read, because towns upstream from this point are already using it, but the pollution pales in comparison to the effect seen in Varanasi as it has passed so many cities on the way by then). We are on a double-sided set of ghats. I ask a well-dressed man “Laxman Jhula?” and point at the bridge and he says in English, “Yes, that is the Laxman Jhula bridge.” I figure it’s maybe a quarter mile or so up the way, and there’s a steady breeze coming off the river; I will walk it. I walk along the ghats, enjoying the breeze, and touch the water. The sun is just now beginning to peak over the mountains bordering Rishikesh. It makes for an enjoyable and peaceful experience, no matter how temporary, and I take a picture with my phone to remind me of the feeling. Maybe some of the sweetness was getting out of the moving people trap. Maybe it was the relief that I was finally out of Varanasi and finally out of Delhi and finally here where it is supposed to be peaceful. Combine that relief with the good feeling you normally get from watching a sunrise, and feeling the energy of the Ganga, it made a very nice experience indeed.
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