March 18, 2014

Busride from Hell

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, bombay, India, mumbai, Night bus, scary stories

A 19-hour bus drive. That’s not too bad.

Or so we thought.
After sitting on the pavement of a hot, busy street for what seems like ages, our bus stops a few hundred metres away from us. As we are entering the bus, we are greeted by a handful of local guys right by the driver’s seat, loudly exclaiming “nice” as they stare us down. Creeped out, we go to the back of the bus to get to our top sleeper. As we climb the ladder, the guys go absolutely nuts. They are laughing, yelling and pointing, just because they got to see us bend over to get into our sleeper. Great. At this point, I am 90 % sure we are going to get either robbed or raped at night. I am extremely terrified, so we try to keep our spirits high by singing children’s songs about bad busdrivers.

But it gets worse.
The sleeper is disgusting. It’s old, worn down and downright dirty. It has to be the smallest, most expensive double sleeper we have ever been in, with no AC either.

But it gets worse.
The bus barely drives anywhere for the first five hours. It will drive for 10-20 minutes, then stop for an hour, then drive for another 10 minutes, only to stop for several hours again. Not having AC on the bus is acceptable when you’re actually driving, as the wind cools you down, but being parking for hours directly in the sun with no curtains to block the warm rays is awful. The mattress and blankets under us gets soaked with our sweat. We are getting increasingly annoyed. And the bus keeps stopping. We realise that it doubles as a delivery service, as we stop just to unload packages, and at one point, all the guys are outside, trying to lift motorbikes to the roof and then attach them. This gives the bus a slight tilt, which is just great when your driver is a maniac behind the wheel.

But it gets worse.
The road is so bumpy, and our bus is driving so fast, that our bodies actually elevate and we bump our heads into the ceiling, even though we are lying straight down. It’s like a long rollercoaster ride that you never asked for.

But it gets worse.
We get our only toiletbreak 9 hours into the ride, but we both have to pee long before that. I blame the bumpy road punching our bladders. Sara is so desperate, she takes out a plastic bag and asks me if it’s OK if she pees right in our sleeper, into the bag. Of course I say no, the girl has no aim and the road is bumpy, and I don’t want to spend 15 hours on a pissed-soaked mattress.

But it gets worse.
At one point, I pull aside the curtain that seperates our sleeper with the rest of the bus, and to our surprise, the bus is completely full. So full, that people are sitting on the floor of the bus. We are the only tourists on the bus, and as soon as I pull aside the curtain, people notice us and we are now the most interesting thing to look at on this bus. I close my eyes, enjoying the breeze coming from the window, drying my sweat-soaked clothes a bit. All of the sudden, Sara starts screaming, and I really think it’s because she has to wet herself, since we had had no toilet breaks. No. Big spider crawling right next to me. I freak out completely, find a reciept and try to squish the son of a bitch, but it slips away and crawls out of the sleeper. Except it didn’t really. So 5 minutes later it is back for more, and I brutally kill it in front of several locals just staring at the only blonde person on the bus, who is letting out a victorious laugh.

Our 19-hour bus ride turned into 22 hours, of course. We only had an apple and some crackers each all day, one pee break, and so many horny locals around us in this confined space. This was without a doubt a busride from Hell.