The Indian Partridge Family on Tour

Trip Start Oct 22, 2005
1
18
224
Trip End Ongoing


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of India  ,
Friday, November 11, 2005

We found our seats on the bus, right up the front and settled in for the 16 hour ride. We have found that people on the buses are so friendly. The man behind us introduced himself and his family. He was off to Pune to play a solo Sitar rehearsal. His daughter was studying classical singing. They also knew a guy called Bradley in Sydney (everyone seems to know someone in Australia). As we set off, we quickly realised the bus was full of musical people and we were serenaded with Indian singing for most of the ride. Yay! As dusk fell we tried to sleep and attempted to recline our seats. Rick's went back fine, Megan's however had a Sitar wedged in behind and wouldn't go back. It was going to be a long ride. Eventually after a few hours we worked up the courage to ask the guy to move his instrument so we could sleep. He did so without a fuss.

We stopped many time for Chai and at 9 pm we pulled into a roadside restaurant for dinner. We tried to order just Chapattis but they laughed at us so we picked randomly off the menu and enjoyed (?) some Butter Masala something. It was very spicy.

Back on the bus the 16 hours stretched into 20 and we finally got dropped off in Mumbai. The bus driver and ticket guy seemed to be running a bit of a cash scam, picking up and dropping off people along the way. It was cash only, straight into their pocket. The bus was supposed to be non-stop (apart from dinner etc) but their entrepreneurial efforts came to the front. With no desire to do any further exploring we made our way to the airport and settled in for the 20 hour wait for our flight. We negotiated a 300 rupee taxi and when we paid he wanted an additional 100 rupees for baggage. We handed over the last 50 rupees we had and walked off.

We initially decided not to get anymore money out to try and avoid the bank fees, however 3 hours in we were hungry, grumpy and bored so we relented and surfed the net whilst eating Mars bars.

Eventually we checked in and found recliner beds so we had an hours sleep and then boarded the 4 hour flight to Bangkok. On the flight we both tried to watch a movie, but fell asleep during it. The flight was uneventful.

Our last few days in India were very trying and tiring so we're keen to move on to new sites and adventures.
Print this entry Mumbai (Bombay) hotels