HELL DRIVE

Unforgettable Indian experience: Bus from Pune to Sangameshwar.

Wednesday 12 of September, 2012.

Original departure time - 20:45

(Due to a 2 hour delay) Final departure time - 22:45

After nearly 3 hours of waiting I start feeling a little bit tired/desperate. I see the bus coming and think: "Finally!". I step into the bus, go up 3 or 4 stairs, turn right and...

Dear reader, today I will start by asking you to make a simple exercise: Just close your eyes (Sorry. I forgot you have to read. Haha!).

Again: Do not close your eyes, and just imagine or think: What would be the 'public transportation of your dreams?'.

Is it by any chance a bus with beds instead of seats?

Yes sir (coming back to my story):

..I turn right and it is A BUS WITH BEDS INSTEAD OF SEATS!

I know, by just putting it that way it sounds like the most awesome, comfortable bus ever. But ohhh.. If this is what is crossing your mind, you are truly mistaken!

If you are a parent and want to punish you rebel/out of control adolescent daughter or son; go ahead and put them in one of these buses for 9 consecutive hours and see if they don't straighten up after such an experience!

(Good that my parents did not know about this when I was a teenager..)

I will explain it to you 'via' 3 out of the 5 senses:

Smell: The nearest comparison I could find was that of a wet dog, that for some reason has been kept locked down in a room with no ventilation and.. it just smells like, I don't know... you know.. not pretty!

Sounds: Strangers snoring, coughing, talking in a low voice, motor noise right next to your ear, etc.

Sight: That type of sight were the simplest and easiest solution is that of just covering your eyes. Completely dirty!

I know that many of you are unaware of the fact that I am a little bit of a clean freak. Not to the extremes; but I am that kind of person who will not let anyone's saliva near my water bottle, not near my food, do not even try to touch my laptop with unclean hands!

So, this night the merely though of knowing how many strange, sweaty, shoe-less people had put themselves where I was at, just.. ... and the smell just made the whole situation "unbearable (elevated to the cube)".

I felt as if I had traveled back in time and placed in quarantine. If either one of my parents would have seen that, they would have grabbed me by the ears and put me in a plane with the words "Back Home" written on it.

After taking off the not so clean sheet of my 'bus-bed' though, and sitting in one of the corners; I managed to survive by convincing myself that there was only one spot in the whole bus that was completely clean, and that this spot happened to be the reduced corner were I crawled myself up in.

Then, around 2:15am when a bus.. with seats, drove by next to ours; I can assure you that I suddenly felt like a person who has been lost in the desert and due to its condition has a 'mirage', a 'hallucination' of a big, fat hamburger and an immense pond of fresh water!

I was thinking: "There it goes; my bus..with seats." (tears in my eyes kept on falling! Haha.. Ok, this is a lie, but I was on the verge of doing that!).

Gladly, at approximately 8:00am we arrived to what I must call 'paradise'!

But this, is a story which will have to wait, because in 'paradise' I have a very limited amount of time for using the internet.

[I wrote this in my laptop at the house, and I just came to a nearby town to post it (the 'fast-express blogging' kind of way.) otherwise it doesn’t work].

Hopefully you enjoyed the HELL TRIP! I certainly didn't!

Concerning my time here at 'paradise', I will be collecting stories and keeping you up to date as much as I can.

Today I leave you with a: "To be continued..."

Greetings dear readers and remember: Avoid HELL DRIVES of whatever kind ;)

P.S -

Now I am imagining an Indian person reading this and saying something like: