Saturday October 18 Road to Nagpur
Wide awake at 5:30! I think Carsen got enough sleep by now. I'm awakened by a honking horn at 5:23. Typical. We try to engage with families back home then hit the cafe at 6:00 a.m. opening. You know it's hot when the back of your fingers and hands are perspiring by 7:00 a.m.!
Packing up, then heading out for a nearby mall, and maybe the bigger one about 25 minutes by taxi. We'll see. We have to be back at the hotel by 3 pm to get a taxi to haul our stuff to the Patel Bus Line, a sleeper coach. To Carsen's delight!
We went to the local Reliance mall, much like Superstore and got a few groceries including a bottle of nice skin lotion. Then on to the Palladium mall which is very, very upscale! Lots of glitter and expensive name brand stores. Not a place for me to shop! But there was a McDonalds in the outer courtyard. Hey, maybe a Big Mac with meat?! Not a chance. Reconstituted chicken with spices and no lettuce. Not great. But we did have a young lady of 19 sit at our table. She has been flying since 16 years of age and is working towards a commercial pilot career. What a delightful conversation with her. We tried to give a Canada frisbee away to a couple of boys but they declined. Instead, a young man sitting next to said he would accept it. Was he ever happy.
We went to a big bazaar and checked out Punjabi suits, but the price reflected the upscale nature of the district and we left to go back to our hotel.
At the hotel, we booked for our return to Mumbai and also booked our airline tickets from Hyderabad to Mumbai in November. Good thing. The bus just won't cut it. The hotel boys helped in getting our luggage to the street, and across the street to a taxi. Crossing the street with luggage is a feat in itself. Then the taxi cab was going to charge us 100 rupees to take us to the bus station. The hotel boys argued about the exorbitant price demanding a fee of 60 rupees. I said I would be happy to pay 80 and then gave the driver 100 when he dropped us off. That's like a toonie!
As we had been told when booking the sleeper coach, we were there before 3:30 p.m. Finally, at 4:15, after sitting at the curb in the sun, a small taxi pulls up and three of us were told to get in. Luggage was tied to the roof carrier and Deepak, Carsen and I squeezed into the back seat, Deepak is a young banker who speaks good English and became our interpreter. He was taking the same bus to Nagpur. Apparently the two decker buses were discouraged from coming into city centre because of the traffic congestion. I think there was more to it. The taxi dropped us off in a quiet neighbourhood in West Mumbai with narrower streets and large trees I. The boulevard, a lot more difficult to negotiate than the wider city streets. There we stood at the sidewalk as the taxi drove away. No taxi, no bus, no instructions. After 10 minutes a minivan pulls to the curb, passengers dismount, and it pulls halfway into the street and stops. Our bus line guide shows up and tells us to put our bags on board. We are going to meet,the sleeper coach somewhere further along. And we do, but the bus helper who handles the luggage is now insisting on getting paid 100 rupees for handling our luggage. Well, I already knew from earlier conversations that they could charge 20 rupees per bag, so I took my stand and held to the legal price! The sleeper coach was nice. Top bunk, double bed size, Windows and curtains on the aisle and window side. Soon it became dark and we slept until first light. With the air conditioning on, it got quite cool in the night. I pulled in my hoodie, got out a crib quilt from my main pack and used my daypack as a pillow. Sometime in the night I heard a slight pop, but took no real notice. Later in the morning as we were rummaging for snacks, I discovered that the skin lotion bottle had popped it's cap and there was a lot of creamy stuff smeared on the contents of my day pack. Well, that was enough to set Carsen into hysterical laughter. But our day dragged on and on. We had been told that it was a 12 hour bus ride, but then it became 15, then 18. The bus actually took off on some pretty winding, rough back roads. Four-wheeling through the wilderness in a sleeper coach wasn't what we signed on for. About 166 km. from Nagpur, we were asked to change buses to another sleeper coach in much worse shape because our bus was sick. Well, the second coach was already pretty much filled and we squeezed onto the edge of a lower bunk. This bus seemed a lot slower especially going uphill. Then it began stopping frequently to let people off. The last 9 km took us about 30 minutes to travel and we arrived at the Nagpur central bus station at 4:00 p.m. By the time our ride came, our trip was 25 hours, averaging a high rate of speed of 24 km/hr. Conclusion? NOT making that bus trip again.
Wide awake at 5:30! I think Carsen got enough sleep by now. I'm awakened by a honking horn at 5:23. Typical. We try to engage with families back home then hit the cafe at 6:00 a.m. opening. You know it's hot when the back of your fingers and hands are perspiring by 7:00 a.m.!
Packing up, then heading out for a nearby mall, and maybe the bigger one about 25 minutes by taxi. We'll see. We have to be back at the hotel by 3 pm to get a taxi to haul our stuff to the Patel Bus Line, a sleeper coach. To Carsen's delight!
We went to the local Reliance mall, much like Superstore and got a few groceries including a bottle of nice skin lotion. Then on to the Palladium mall which is very, very upscale! Lots of glitter and expensive name brand stores. Not a place for me to shop! But there was a McDonalds in the outer courtyard. Hey, maybe a Big Mac with meat?! Not a chance. Reconstituted chicken with spices and no lettuce. Not great. But we did have a young lady of 19 sit at our table. She has been flying since 16 years of age and is working towards a commercial pilot career. What a delightful conversation with her. We tried to give a Canada frisbee away to a couple of boys but they declined. Instead, a young man sitting next to said he would accept it. Was he ever happy.
We went to a big bazaar and checked out Punjabi suits, but the price reflected the upscale nature of the district and we left to go back to our hotel.
At the hotel, we booked for our return to Mumbai and also booked our airline tickets from Hyderabad to Mumbai in November. Good thing. The bus just won't cut it. The hotel boys helped in getting our luggage to the street, and across the street to a taxi. Crossing the street with luggage is a feat in itself. Then the taxi cab was going to charge us 100 rupees to take us to the bus station. The hotel boys argued about the exorbitant price demanding a fee of 60 rupees. I said I would be happy to pay 80 and then gave the driver 100 when he dropped us off. That's like a toonie!
As we had been told when booking the sleeper coach, we were there before 3:30 p.m. Finally, at 4:15, after sitting at the curb in the sun, a small taxi pulls up and three of us were told to get in. Luggage was tied to the roof carrier and Deepak, Carsen and I squeezed into the back seat, Deepak is a young banker who speaks good English and became our interpreter. He was taking the same bus to Nagpur. Apparently the two decker buses were discouraged from coming into city centre because of the traffic congestion. I think there was more to it. The taxi dropped us off in a quiet neighbourhood in West Mumbai with narrower streets and large trees I. The boulevard, a lot more difficult to negotiate than the wider city streets. There we stood at the sidewalk as the taxi drove away. No taxi, no bus, no instructions. After 10 minutes a minivan pulls to the curb, passengers dismount, and it pulls halfway into the street and stops. Our bus line guide shows up and tells us to put our bags on board. We are going to meet,the sleeper coach somewhere further along. And we do, but the bus helper who handles the luggage is now insisting on getting paid 100 rupees for handling our luggage. Well, I already knew from earlier conversations that they could charge 20 rupees per bag, so I took my stand and held to the legal price! The sleeper coach was nice. Top bunk, double bed size, Windows and curtains on the aisle and window side. Soon it became dark and we slept until first light. With the air conditioning on, it got quite cool in the night. I pulled in my hoodie, got out a crib quilt from my main pack and used my daypack as a pillow. Sometime in the night I heard a slight pop, but took no real notice. Later in the morning as we were rummaging for snacks, I discovered that the skin lotion bottle had popped it's cap and there was a lot of creamy stuff smeared on the contents of my day pack. Well, that was enough to set Carsen into hysterical laughter. But our day dragged on and on. We had been told that it was a 12 hour bus ride, but then it became 15, then 18. The bus actually took off on some pretty winding, rough back roads. Four-wheeling through the wilderness in a sleeper coach wasn't what we signed on for. About 166 km. from Nagpur, we were asked to change buses to another sleeper coach in much worse shape because our bus was sick. Well, the second coach was already pretty much filled and we squeezed onto the edge of a lower bunk. This bus seemed a lot slower especially going uphill. Then it began stopping frequently to let people off. The last 9 km took us about 30 minutes to travel and we arrived at the Nagpur central bus station at 4:00 p.m. By the time our ride came, our trip was 25 hours, averaging a high rate of speed of 24 km/hr. Conclusion? NOT making that bus trip again.
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