Well, I am not dead...not yet anyways. The weather Gods have been kind and the days from the 22nd till now have alternated between making me apprehensive about the onset of the summer heat for real and enjoying the dust-storms and the thunderstorms being thrown this way - I have counted three of those since I reached here less than a week back (not that I am complaining!)
And so it is that after six days, I have finally found the necessary energy to write about my journey from Delhi to Pilani. And I am going to make this a balanced, colourless and bland account of the entire thing, that I can guarantee.
The journey to Pilani in itself was interesting - it was the first time I was travelling alone from my home to BITS (usually I am a part of a group of at least twenty). Of course, I had a fellow passenger who hailed from the nearby town of Bagar and he promptly began listing the names of all the famous Indian businessmen (or rather business families) who hail from the region around Pilani. Then came the usual running around Delhi trying to get a bus to Pilani (although this time I had taken a refill at McDonalds :) ). Of course, it didn't help that it had rained cats and dogs earlier in the day; so what I got was two buses which were supposed to turn up not turning up (of course, buses don't turn up by themselves, but I reckon everybody but the daftest person would have caught my drift).
So...what I ended up doing was take a bus from Delhi to Bhiwani (which is 80 km from Pilani) in the hope that I'd get another bus from there to my destination. Of course, like all other things that happened on the day, the decision turned out to be bad, very bad...If sitting through two successive B-grade Hindi movies from the 80s that had 60-year old passengers leering at the slightest show of skin of the female kind (well there is only one kind of skin though, isn't there) wasn't enough, the journey which should have taken three hours took four and a half hours. So there I was in Bhiwani having missed the last bus to Pilani (God, everything rhymes!!!!) and better still, the bus stand was closed because of waterlogging due to incessant rains (in the middle of the summer).
So after waiting at an unknown place in the midst of unknown people with no idea of how to go forward, I had to resort to trying hitch-hiking for the first time in my life. So the thumbs came out (though I doubt half of the cars with defective headlights would have seen them) and after an hour of desperate courting of the few who actually stopped, I found myself inside the cabin of a truck with ten other guys - the ten included the driver and his companion.
What followed was a cat-and-mouse game of "Bend your arms and cringe your nose and breathe in to contract your chest and create a millimetre more of space". One has to actually experience it to actually realize the level of expertise that can be attained in this game in two hours of a tiresome journey. Of course, I think I might have won since I was dropped off at the outskirts of Pilani in one piece. It was a closely-fought encounter and I had aches and pain for the next three days to attest for that.
Nice, wasn't it???
And so it is that after six days, I have finally found the necessary energy to write about my journey from Delhi to Pilani. And I am going to make this a balanced, colourless and bland account of the entire thing, that I can guarantee.
The journey to Pilani in itself was interesting - it was the first time I was travelling alone from my home to BITS (usually I am a part of a group of at least twenty). Of course, I had a fellow passenger who hailed from the nearby town of Bagar and he promptly began listing the names of all the famous Indian businessmen (or rather business families) who hail from the region around Pilani. Then came the usual running around Delhi trying to get a bus to Pilani (although this time I had taken a refill at McDonalds :) ). Of course, it didn't help that it had rained cats and dogs earlier in the day; so what I got was two buses which were supposed to turn up not turning up (of course, buses don't turn up by themselves, but I reckon everybody but the daftest person would have caught my drift).
So...what I ended up doing was take a bus from Delhi to Bhiwani (which is 80 km from Pilani) in the hope that I'd get another bus from there to my destination. Of course, like all other things that happened on the day, the decision turned out to be bad, very bad...If sitting through two successive B-grade Hindi movies from the 80s that had 60-year old passengers leering at the slightest show of skin of the female kind (well there is only one kind of skin though, isn't there) wasn't enough, the journey which should have taken three hours took four and a half hours. So there I was in Bhiwani having missed the last bus to Pilani (God, everything rhymes!!!!) and better still, the bus stand was closed because of waterlogging due to incessant rains (in the middle of the summer).
So after waiting at an unknown place in the midst of unknown people with no idea of how to go forward, I had to resort to trying hitch-hiking for the first time in my life. So the thumbs came out (though I doubt half of the cars with defective headlights would have seen them) and after an hour of desperate courting of the few who actually stopped, I found myself inside the cabin of a truck with ten other guys - the ten included the driver and his companion.
What followed was a cat-and-mouse game of "Bend your arms and cringe your nose and breathe in to contract your chest and create a millimetre more of space". One has to actually experience it to actually realize the level of expertise that can be attained in this game in two hours of a tiresome journey. Of course, I think I might have won since I was dropped off at the outskirts of Pilani in one piece. It was a closely-fought encounter and I had aches and pain for the next three days to attest for that.
Nice, wasn't it???
2 Responses:
well, your aches might attest to the strenuousness of your journey, but the stoic tone of your post makes it seem like you are describing somebody else's experience. Kind of reminds me of an older post of yours, some rooftop journey to Delhi on an isbt bus or something...
:O
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