White knuckle Bus Riding

25th September 2006 - Lumbini
If you've never taken a ride on an Indian (or Nepali) local bus, you should. It will enable you to cross with ease one of the last remaining thresholds of fear known to man. It's real nail biting, white knuckle stuff and rates alongside other extreme sports such as free fall parachute jumping or swimming with sharks. Most of these you can do anywhere in the world but White Knuckle Bus Riding is, as far as I know, unique to the subcontinent.
Earlier this week we took such a ride from Pokhara to Lumbini, a small town on the Indian border: a nine hour bus ride to the birthplace of Buddha that should have taken at least twelve. Our bus was a Tata (as are they all). It was almost as old as me, with huge tyres that were just as bald, and absolutely no suspension. Our driver, an unwashed sixteen year old, drove it as though it were a police car in a Bollywood car chase. With his left foot on the dashboard (I don't think he used the clutch once) and his right hand on the air horn button he wove his way through oxen, pedestrians, hand carts and rickshaws as well as between approaching traffic, all of which he did with the confidence of a rally driver. His co-workers, bus boys, hung grinning from the open front door or shimmied across the roof of the moving bus and in through an open window, like Harrison Ford in an Indianna Jones movie. Their job was to tout for local passengers who may (or may not) wish to travel one or two stops at a discounted price. This was negotiated while the bus was still moving, and if agreed, the passenger was pulled on the still moving bus, or offloaded in a similar fashion at the end of their ride. Fortunately I had my eyes closed most of the way, but Anthea assures me it was her biggest thrill yet.
Once upon a time, the most seriously hazardous thing you could imagine was to try and jump a motor cycle across ten to twelve busses of sail over Niagara in a wooden barrel. Today, at less than 50 rupees per 100 miles, White Knuckle Bussing must rate as the cheapest thrill in town.