On the Open Road

Note: This was mostly written on 9/14/07

As I had anticipated before we got here, travel from place to place in India is alwase a challange.

Before last night our modes of long distance transport had been either flying (from Leh and back), chair car on a high cost Shabati Express train (Delhi to Agra and back) and the so called "2 tier AC Car" on an overnight train. Flying is obviously the best, with Jet Airways and Indian Airways both serving full meals on a two hour flight, but the cost is obviously also high. It cost 150 each to fly to Leh and 100 back. The Shabati Express was a pretty standard train set up with big 2x2 seating. These are also the fastest trains available in India, as far as I know, so it took us only 2 hours to cover the 200km from Delhi to Agra. Obviously the Shinkansen in Japan can go 300km/hr max, but that is in a different league. The problem here is that these trains are only available between major cities that can be reached in a day trip and the cost was 10 bucks for a 2 hour ride, which is a king's ransom for Indian transportation.

As far as the 2 tier AC for overnight, this is actually supprisingly good. The car itself is reasonably clean, with good strong AC. You get a sort of bunk arragement either in a group of 2 along one wall or 4 along the other wall of the car, with 2 fairly wide bunk beds. The beds can fold so the upper one is stowed and the bottom serves as a couch size seat for both people in the bunks, although for a night train pretty much everyone stays in the bunk. The groups are seperated by curtains and they supply bedding of hospital type sheets. We locked our bags underneath the beds with a bike lock.

The sleeping on these is actully really good because the gentle rocking of the train at night puts you right to sleep. In the morning you arrive unshowered, but otherwise very refreshed. The downside is that it is pretty slow, as it took 10 hours to get from Jaipur to Udaipur, which is probabaly only about 500km. Also the cost is not peanuts, around 20 bucks each, but you are getting a place to sleep for the night, so no big deal.

So last night we try the next step down on the ladder, the sleeper bus. Our reason for this is just a matter of timing. Indian Railways seems competive between major cities, but we were going for Udaipur to Junagadh in Gujarat. You can do this on the train, but you need to take a 10 hour overnight to Ahmedabad then wait 2 hours and take a 8 hour day train to Junagadh. The sleeper bus is only 9 hours and was advertised to take us to a place 1 hour away by bus, Rajkot. Also, the sleeper bus 10 bucks each.

So, we get our ticket with Nisha getting an assurance that there is a reasonable bathroom and we are off. These are not run by the government, so you basically go to where they tell you to get the bus, which was a main traffic circle in Udaipur with several little shops that orginize these things. When we get to the place there are quite a few other western backpacker types, but most leave for other destinations, leaving us with a handful of us left.

The sleeper bus is a stange arrangment. There are one person sleeping cublicles on one side of the bus, one floor level and one up high, and the other side has two seats next to each other at floor level and a two person sleeping cubible above. We had one of these two person sleeping cublicles. The bus also had no AC, so we needed to leave the big window in our cublicle open by varying amounts during the night. Also, the place is pretty much a mess, with little kids and even a western backpacker sleeping on the floor of the hallway during the night, making you step over them to go anywhere.

The night got off to a bad start because as it turned out there was no bathroom on the bus. Nisha found this out and ran off, but came back in a panic because in the public bathroom outside the bus, which was bad even by Indian standards, it was dark and she steped in a pile of human poop. Thus she was in a discusted panic when she got back to the bus and stuck her shoe in the best plastic bag we had. I did not get a change to go to teh bathroom and had to shove off at 10:00 needing to go and with nothing to do.

While we were on the road we did get some sleep, but the starting and stopping of a bus on Indian roads does not make it easy. Fortunately we did eventaully end up on a interstate highway of sorts, so this was pretty nice. We also stopped twice at roadside dahba (truck stop) type places and this was a lifesaver as it gave me the chance to go to the bathroom (which was nicer then the one at the start), buy snacks and clean off Nisha's shoe, which was not a pretty job.

The other catch with these buses is that lateness seems to be pretty much normal. Our bus to Rajkot was 1 hour behind, then the next similar bus to Junagadh took 2 and a half hours rather then 1.

Anyway, needless to say we will be taking the train in the future when it is at all practical. But, if the bus is really the only practical way to get somewhere then it is surviveable. As a side note, we ended up springing for a car to take us to Diu a day later.