So when you drive up Hwy 400 towards Barrie, sometimes the traffic slows to a stop, you sit for a couple of minutes, crawl for an hour, then suddenly it's all clear! Why is that? There's no accident, construction or anything else - what a pain, right?
So here's the Indian version: We leave Aramol by local bus around 3 pm, takes an hour or so to get to Mapusa, a bustling town where we catch the overnight sleeper to Hampi bus leaving at 6 pm. The bus arrives, with double bunks throughout, really pretty comfortable. Amy and I settle into the top bunk, and our friend Leita takes the bottom. We begin...
Sometime after Margao, we notice a ton of trucks lined up on the other side of the road. By ton, I mean thousands and thousands! I thought they were parked for the night, and that was kind of true. A few minutes later, we stopped. A half hour later I went outside and saw that traffic was completely jammed in both directions. It is after midnight now. The driver goes to sleep. I realize that every vehicle in both directions is occupied. After about an hour, a man with a stick (!) comes down the line of traffic hitting each vehicle and calling out to wake up the drivers. We start moving. Okay then. About 100 metres further, we stop. Driver goes to sleep. Nobody knows why. An hour later, the man with the stick wakes us to move forward another 100 metres. This goes on ALL NIGHT! I imagine that between midnight and 7 am we travelled maybe a couple of kilometres. Then at a certain point, traffic starts moving and we are on our way. Our 12 hour bus ride was supposed to arrive at Hampi at 6 am, and actually arrived at 7 pm. 25 hours!
There is no logic, there is no point in trying to understand or change it, we must just flow with it! The good news is it was quite comfortable, and we were all able to sleep at least several hours. And I read and listened to music, read the Times of India, looked out at the varying landscape. As we pass through every town, people call out to us, wave and smile. We are really something weird and wonderful in those buses!
Very nice description of the bus ride. Finally I got a hold of your blog and having fun reading the posts. You must be a stoic to take it all in without getting mad. Clearly, time is not money there. How can the North American Executives believe that India can compete on the productivity front?! I guess slave labor and extremely low exchange rate masks all traffic jams, even the Indian one.
ReplyDeleteHave a great trip and keep the posts up, and funny.
Erich.