Transportation Part 3

Me and a monkey! He was closer just prior to taking the picture, on the ground right in front of me, but I made the error of holding eye contact which is a no-no. So he jumped in a tree. This was on the way to the Dali Lama's temple.








We’ve ridden quite a few buses since coming here; each one has been a tad bit different but pretty standard for the most part. Our first was from Mysore to Kushalnagar and it was pretty standard from an American standpoint, not much to say except it was a beautiful drive. I actually have a little movie clip of some of the scenery but it’s not even the prettiest part and is pretty bumpy.

Our second bus ride was about 5 ½ hours from Kushalnagar to Bangalore. It broke down for about an hour and a half and only one other passenger besides us stayed. There was a man who spoke English who tried to convince us that we should get on the next bus with them, but we were a little wary of switching buses as ours was going direct to Bangalore and who knows what the other bus would have done or gone to. Plus, we only thought we were going to be there for about 30 minutes tops. Silly us! Here are some pictures I took while waiting for it to be fixed:

























The third bus we took was the longest ride at a whopping 14 hours, which is almost as long as the flight from Chicago to Delhi ps. We left from Mojnu Ka Tila (no idea on the spelling really, it’s a Tibetan settlement on the outskirts of Delhi) at 6:30 pm Tuesday night and arrived in Mcleod Ganj about 8 am Wednesday. This bus ride was simply insane. First there were the smells. Now, these were not the buses fault; Delhi just has some pretty intense scents here and there. They are simply beyond description. Luckily, that passed pretty quickly, but if we thought our troubles were ended we were in for a rude awakening!

I never could have imagined the utter size of potholes that exist along the road between Delhi and Dharamsala, but these suckers are monstrous. I was almost thrown from my seat here and there, it was pretty exciting. Then there were moments where it seemed the bus was trying to shake itself apart, which were fittingly accompanied by a deafening rattling. But our bus was sturdy! Sturdy enough to ford a river and then climb up a steep incline; I was very proud of it. We don’t know what happened to the road, whether the driver got lost, just decided to take the scenic route, or if that was the road, but we got to our destination so I guess it was all good.

With such a long drive, we made a few pit stops along the way. At our first stop, Spencer graciously shared some of his chips with me which I almost immediately spit out, but being unable to find some place I deemed appropriate I choked it down. They were the absolute worst things I have ever tasted. Melissa aptly described it when she said “Those taste like that smell from Delhi”. No one else seemed to mind them much; Marc and Spencer are actually rather fond of them, but…yuck. We talked to a Buddhist nun from Australia during the stop; she was really nice and invited us to a seminar she teaches here. We made two more stops during the trip, and each time I was more impatient. Between the potholes and the insane shaking, it was pretty much impossible to sleep for any amount of time. At least when the sun started coming up we could see just how beautiful our surroundings were (ps Melissa has some pretty pictures of the sunrise on her blog). And it is absolutely gorgeous here! It didn’t completely erase the irritability from not sleeping, but it helped.

We are going back to Delhi to meet with Lynn from the Field Studies office next week, and all have our fingers crossed that we will be able to take a train. Then we’d only have to ride the bus out of the mountains. That’s our tentative plan for the day, so here’s hoping!