Before I tell you much about traveling through India, you need to know about the modes of travel. Many tourists who go through India will travel on an air-conditioned coach which is basically imported into the country for Westerner tourist travel. If you’re not traveling to preassigned, sanitized locations that are subsidized by the government for tourist use, and you intend to travel through the country a little, there are only a few ways you can get transportation. If you want to tour around New Delhi, you can arrange for an all-day taxi or you can arrange for a minivan for a larger group of people. It’s a three day trip driving to get to the Himalayas, so to make this trip you have to have some different transportation. There are basically two choices. If you are single or with a small group of people you can rent a Jeep and a driver. This is actually a preferred method, because once you get into the Himalaya foothills, and the Himalayas Mountains themselves the roads become narrow, washed out, and tenuous to say the best. I arrived in New Delhi with a medium-sized group of people consisting of an esoteric mixture of researchers, students, and trekkers. For a larger group of people like this, you can rent a bus – an Indian bus. A touring coach would never be able to travel the roads in northern India and through the Himalayan foothills. Roads are narrow, traffic is frequently at a standstill, and people pass like they are on suicide bomber missions! The primary safety feature of all cars in India is the horn. When people pass, they blow the horn. When you hear a horn blowing, this is what it means, “I’m passing you now, there’s a car coming and there isn’t enough space for me to get by, so look out here I come!” The horns are blowing all the time. Driving throughout the countryside of India is basically playing a constant game of chicken.
All larger vehicles in India are built from the same foundational vehicle frame – it’s basically a truck frame that looks about like a dump truck here in the United States. This utilitarian frame and cab are used for dump trucks, freight hauling trucks, flatbed trucks, and, yes, buses. In the states we are used to diesel semi-trucks hauling freight from city to city and location to location, but in India all freight is hauled in these much smaller four wheeled hauling trucks. I tell you this because it will become important to the story later. The bus is simply a slightly modified truck frame and cab with a long cubicle mounted on the back of the truck frame to accommodate passengers. The seats are bench seats very similar to school buses here in the states, but they are a bit more comfortable and a little bit more ornate. In fact the driver/owner goes to a lot of trouble to place fancy drapery and ornamental cord throughout the entire bus giving it an extremely ethnically Indian decor. The front cab of this truck-bus has glass windows across the back and a back door that you open to step through into the passenger section. Our driver had an assistant that road with him, and they kept that door open all the time. This will be important in the story later as well. In India there are no safety regulations concerning how long a driver can drive a truck or a bus. Our driver drove from dawn to extremely late at night (and sometimes into the morning) and he never – I mean never – took a break. Either he didn’t have a bladder, or he used a catheter – and I’m pretty sure he didn’t use a catheter. The only time he stopped was when the lead researcher asked him to stop for a meal break, or if we were stopping to get gas. I remember one time several of the students and trekkers asked the trip leader if we could just stop to go to the bathroom – it had been hours since the last stop. The trip leader talk to the bus driver and the driver simply stop the bus in the middle of the narrow highway road. We were in the high country just before the Himalayan foothills and it was hilly with grass growing freely everywhere. The road was on the side of a hill and there were no other cars on the road. I remember we could look down into the valley where there was a river and a small town next to it. Girls took the low side of the bus, guys took the high side of the bus, and we did our part to encourage rapid, prolific growth of the wild grasses with natural fertilizers. The corollary to this story of course is that when you walk through India you have to be careful where you step. I’m speaking from experience on this one.
Next week: the sights, sounds, and smells of traveling through northern India