I just arrived back in Rishikesh after a two week trekking sojourn to the pilgrimage sites of Kedarnath, Hemkund Sahib (and the Valley of Flowers), and Badrinath.
I spent the day praying... not in the enlightenment sort of way, but rather for my safety! I'm not usually sqeamish about bus rides, but have to say the roads in the Uttarkhand mountains are the most dangerous I have been on... more so than the 40 hour ride from Manali to Leh, Ladakh. The Uttarkhand roads lay or try to lay upon very steep mountainsides.
In the last two weeks I spent three or four 10-12 hour days on these roads. One day I was amused as we passed a sign that said "Warning: Landslide Area!"... this was after about 8 hours of traveling upon roads covered with landslides. I think that was the same day that I saw a sign saying the area was being monitored and measured for landslide activity. I felt better knowing that my death would be counted should we get swiped out by a landslide.
Over the last weeks, a line in Aaron K's book Between a Rock and Hard Place kept coming to my mind: Geologic time does not stop. He means that the Earth keeps plodding away in Her changes. Boulders fall. Earthquakes, floods, and ice ages happen. No matter where we and our little selves happen to be. We tend to live in denial of that. Memphis is on a major fault line which either Lewis or Clark happened to be around during the last major earthquake in that region. The alluvial soil rose up in waves! I pondered that alot as I rode along roads that could slide away, or be covered in boulders as big as cars in the flash of a heartbeat. Really all we have is our faith and prayer and intention. Doesn't do much good to worry about such things.
Today I was fortunate enough to get the "death seat"... my assigned seat was in the cab of the bus... next to the front window on a bench that is perpendicular to the direction of travel. If I were to look straight ahead, I would be staring at the driver. I looked over my left shoulder to focus on the horizon so as not to get motion sickness. There were six others besides myself and the bus driver in the "cab" of the bus. Three of us sat on the bench seat, backs to the side window. Three others crammed onto a platform extending from the console. One fellow sat in lotus position for several hours!
I faithfully kept my eyes on the horizon, occasionally glancing over the sheer dropoffs, while the man next to me vomited. He was joined by a woman in the cab in vomiting fever at one point. I was happily upwind!
The driver seemed to be going too fast. These are not normal roads... it takes 10-12 hours to go 250 km or so. Often the roads are barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. On one side, there may be rock outcrops that threaten to decapitate vehicles, and sheer dropoffs on the other side. Unlike the road to Ladakh, much of the road here was paved, where it wasn't washed out or covered by landslides. I think the paving made it worse because it allows vehicles to go faster.
When I got my ticket yesterday, I thought the front seat would be good. On my way to Kedarnath, I was in the back seat which serves as a catapult to pummel ones behind. The front seat wasn't much better. I spent a good deal of my time trying to perfect my posture so as not to increase the growing pain in my back. And then, in the front seat, I got to see all the action! The near misses with other vehicles. At one point the driver nearly ran right into a lorry (the mainstay of Indian road transport, lorries are rather like large dumptrucks, bright ornamented and painted). We skidded to a halt about 5 feet in front of the oncoming truck.
I wasn't sure whether to wish the driver was on or off drugs! I rather wished I was on some! I kept to my prayers... to live healthily into my 90s... to arrive intact to Rishikesh. I tried to send the driver psychic images of love and peace and no hurry. Meanwhile the Border Road Organizations signs tried to do their part: Better Late than Never; Hurry, Burry, Spoils the Curry; Be Gentle on my Curves; etc... The BRO signs are amusing parts of the border/mountain roads with quaint antedotes, often misspelled. One sign said "Mobile Phone Off; Sent Bell On!" I suppose they meant seat belt!
It didn't matter much because either our driver didn't read English, or didn't care. We careened around the corners and I could only pray that he knew the road well (he seemed to know the maximum speed to take the curves for sure!) and that because this is India and things work differently here... we would encounter oncoming vehicles at just the right spaces... where we could pass each other. I realized at one point that at least if we all died, since we had been to the Holy Badrinath Temple, all our sins and karma would be clear! The Hindu idea is that then you are spared another incarnation. I'm not sure if I want to be spared another incarnation, but maybe spared another bus ride like this!
Last week on one bus, we passed a truck with about 5 inches of clearance. In many ways, I think these mountain drivers are the best in the world. They know their vehicles to the inch. All the trucks and buses have conductors who play an active role in monitoring the vehicles edge. They work long hours. We left at 6:30 am this morning and it would likely be 8pm before the bus finished it's route. I couldn't imagine being the driver. There wasn't more than 100 yards of road today that was straight... and even then it was likely in a village where any number of people, cows, bikes, etc... might be on the road.
But it is different here. Passing is not an ego based thing. We pass them. They pass us on the next curve. Passing is part of life. There is no such thing as defensive driving here either. You just go along as fast as you can. But there is an awareness that pedestrians, bikes, cows, etc will be on the road. In contrast, in the US there seems to be ego and upset about passing, and in many places anything that is not a motor vehicle is considered a dire obstacle to the progress of the supreme automobile. In India, lanes do not really exist. You keep to the left. The bigger vehicle usually demands the right of way, but will sometimes back down. It's kind of like a game of chicken with a tiny bit of courtesy and common sense.
Towards the end of the day, we skidded to a halt with my seat seeming to hang over the edge of the cliff. It didn't seem to phase the driver much. By that point, it barely phased me. I knew my journey was nearly over and I was hopeful that since we had made it that far, we would reach our destinations.
I was grateful to get off the bus. Next time I think I will be happy with a seat in the back where I can't see all the action. The leg room was just as bad in the front... Asian buses are not built for larger people and often my knees are crammed against the seat in front. Today, they were crammed against the console.
I think I reached a few moments of lightheartedness in my prayers today, but overall I was tired. As I tried to remember how to walk from where the bus dropped me off, I ran into a manager from the guest house where I'd stayed before. He escorted me to the guesthouse... the staff and owner were happy to see me... it was like coming home to family.
Now it's time for bed!
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