The Racing Rally Bus
Thanks to the fine instructions on the HillHacks site, we chose to ride the HRTC bus from Delhi to Dharamsala overnight. Be careful though to check the HRTC booth on your left in the big room upstairs before going down to the waiting room, as the displays there won’t indicate anything relevant to you: we reached gate 29 minutes before departure. The seats are very comfortable for small people. If you can sleep anywhere, and I mean anywhere, no problem; otherwise, sleeping in the Volvo bus is a challenge, as the driver is racing towards destination at full speed, slaloming like if it were a bobsled down an Olympic racing track. Our driver was able to pass any single bus that happened to appear before us from Delhi to Dharamsala. Driving with the horn as Indians do, our racing bus blazed by a police car with blue lights on, on a portion of limited speed urban road. Apparently nothing could make him slow down, not even the ‘dinner pause’ that seemed to last only a few minutes. Better be prepared and bring samosas, water, and fruits… And make sure you eat them before reaching the mountains, after which your hand movement will become slave to the curves of a bumpy road.
For some reasons Indians don’t seem to be able to live with silence: as soon as the bus departed, the tiny screen in front started showing a war movie opposing Pakistani and Indian nuclear submarines. The speakers above our heads were impossible to control, so I had to ask the person with the remote command to lower the sound a bit. It wasn’t so satisfying so we tried to break the speaker itself, without any luck (the Letherman tools were in the bus’ hold.) I ended up watching the unending urban landscape for most of the journey.
As the driver was horning his way out of the restaurant parking, as the waiters were laughing at our surprise and making signs to calm down and take our time, I walked towards the bus still chewing, upset to have been forcibly removed from my dinner plate by the insisting boor. I stepped in the bus as he was driving away:
“If you’re in such a hurry you won’t let people have dinner, then don’t mention a pause and we can organize ourselves better”, I shouted at the driver. “Yes”, he replied. I rolled my eyes and looked back at the dozen people who were waiting to hop on the bus, before walking to my seat. @natacha told me that as I walked away in puzzlement, the driver was shouting things that are better left untranscribed, and it gave me some satisfaction, as I thought the man did not understand anything what I was telling him. In the end we departed with a warm handshake and a “welcome to Dharamsala”, an hour before schedule.
In the few preceding minutes, we had been greeted by an eagle, flying along the bus, maybe 10 meters from my window, hunting in the lush river below us. It was the first time I would look at an eagle from above.
