I first saw Nepali trucks (which share their style with Indian trucks) at the border town of Zhang
Mu. Chinese trucks were drab and staid. A typical Nepali truck is
bright and decorated to the point of garishness. Its body is painted a
brownish shade of red. There's a slogan painted along the top of its
windshield - something religious, probably. There's another slogan
above the side window - something to raise a smile, perhaps. On top of
the cab, a wooden superstructure has been erected so that extra cargo
or passengers can be secured, and this displays a picture of Ganesh.
Curlicues, and images of vines and flowers wind along the sideboards.
On one side of the rear bumper is carefully lettered "Speed Control 40
km/h", and on the other an equally carefully lettered "Horn Please" to
let you know that the driver will indicate if it's safe to pass if you
honk. There may even be an eye painted at each front corner, just as
a fisherman adds eyes to his boat's prow to lead him safely home.
Seatbelts
are almost unused throughout much of Southeast and West Asia.
Occasionally you'll find a vehicle where the driver has one, but
passengers apparently don't require them. There was a long period
where I'd enter a vehicle and find myself clawing over a shoulder for a
non-existent belt. And the thing is, you really do miss seatbelts
when the vehicle you're in is weaving in and out of traffic, or weaving
its way across traffic, or even bouncing and skidding on a cliff-top
dirt track in search of the nearest pothole or cliff-bottom to bring
the four wheel drive to a full stop.
I'd originally intended to come down from Sikkim and head over to Assam
and other northeastern states. I'd originally intended to visit Bhutan
since you can do a daytrip from West Bengal's Jaigon to the Bhutanese town of Phuentsholing. Phuentsholing
is an aberration. You can cross for free there provided you're out at
night; to visit elsewhere in Bhutan you need to pay US$200 a day for
the minimum stay of a week. Or rather you could cross for free there.
In mid-December bombs went off and the border closed. So no Phuentsholing.
This made the interesting bits of the northeast even less accessible
without long stretches of travel. India's northeast frontier is,
really, rather inaccessible for an overland traveller.
If you were to glance at a sketch map of India, you might note that one
reasonably ideal route to explore the northeastern states could start
from Jaigon, head to Assam, duck down to Meghalaya, and then up to Arunachal Pradesh coming down through Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and finally Tripura. From Tripura you'd cross into Bangladesh and from Banglandesh into the southern part of West Bengal, not far from Kolkata.
If you were to sit with a map of India you'd note that the main roads
really don't join up like that, and you'd need to backtrack out of most
of the other states into Assam. But you could still cross from Assam
into Tripura and thence to Bangladesh. And then perhaps you might consider the question of permits. Access to Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram
are all restricted. Some require group travel; others are apparently
difficult to get any permit for. Perhaps a permit may be obtained from Guwahati in Assam. Or perhaps you'll need to duck down to Kolkata
-- or perhaps even travel a week to New Delhi and back. But if you're
travelling solo, then a group may not be immediately available. So
perhaps it's not so essential to visit those restricted states?
But at least you could still cross from Assam into Tripura and thence to Bangladesh. From Guwahati to Tripura's capital Agartala
is a gentle three hundred and fifty kilometres as the crow flies, and a
somewhat longer and less gentle distance when the twists and turns of
the road are taken into account: assuming no unexpected stops are
required, it's a twenty-five hour travail. Any unexpected stops - and
these may include tires bursting, mechanical failure, or even members
of the National Liberation Front of Tripura
attacking your armed convoy - could result in extended delays, even
permanent ones. It may not be entirely surprising, therefore, that I
decided to bypass the northeast, and head south to Kolkata
instead. I do intend to visit northeastern India one day; perhaps not
until after the Border Roads Organisation work their magic.
The decision to bypass the northeastern states was a snap one (though not exactly, I feel, a hasty one):
- I'd arrived back in Siliguri from Gangtok rather later than expected
- The bus to Guwahati didn't leave for another 22 hours
- Siliguri was as uninspiring a junction on the second visit as it had been on the first
- Another 22 hours in Siliguri seemed excessive
- The difficulty in getting through via Bangladesh meant that I'd likely need to backtrack to Siliguri from Assam
- To backtrack once to Siliguri was unfortunate; to backtrack twice would appear to be rather careless...
So I hopped an overnight bus to Kolkata.
After the excellence of Sikkimese roads, I was surprised at just how poor the road between Siliguri and Kolkata
was. Sections and pillars of what may eventually be a dual carriage
highway appeared beside our road for a little while, but within a
couple of hours roadworks and construction had been left behind, and
the bus was shuddering over fragmenting asphalt. A few hours of fitful
dozing later, and I was roused by the sensation of falling half a foot
from mid-air back onto my seat; the bus had hit a dirt track. I
wondered momentarily if our driver had decided to take a shortcut
before noticing three things: both sides of the road were lined with
sleeping trucks, there were trucks immediately ahead of us, and there
was a sign giving distances to places, including Kolkata. It seemed that our track was not just any dirt track; it was a major route.
It wasn't long before we hit a traffic jam; there was a constriction; oncoming traffic had the momentum.
We stopped.
We waited.
The oncoming traffic passed, and we continued on.
The hours passed, the roads got better, the sky grew lighter, and we arrived in Kolkata in time for breakfast.
But I've not yet told you about the crash.
We were barrelling down the highway - it was on the good patch between Siliguri
and the roadworks - when we hit a truck. The truck, parked with lights
off, was mostly but not entirely off the road. We were lucky: somehow
the side of our bus was heavily dented and scored, but we avoided a
head-on collision and there was no other damage. I don't understand
just how the bus managed to get hit where it did, as it never appeared
to swerve - there was just a loud bang. There was a few minutes of a
lot of angry shouting between the truckdriver
and the bus driver, but nothing was written down, and the bus driver
returned the bus to its course, so I don't know if any further action
was ever taken.
I can understand why many prefer Indian trains to Indian buses.
They're faster; smoother - oh so much smoother; you can walk around;
you can go to the toilet - catching a bus requires bladder control for
men and extraordinary bladder control for women since their stops are
infrequent and some toilet stops don't have any privacy (public
urination is acceptable for males but not females); you can buy a
reasonable assortment of food; you're less likely to get caught in a
traffic jam or sideswipe a sleeping truck. In short, if I were to ever
take a twenty-five hour trip from anywhere to anywhere I'd rather do it
by train than bus.
Foreigners receive preferential treatment from Indian Rail, which
has a
separate booking office in major cities and sets aside blocks of seats
on sleeper trains. This means that tourists only have to book a few
days in advance, and may be able to avoid queuing for hours at the
railway (if there's no foreigner booking office, it's worthwhile
getting a travel agent to buy your ticket just to avoid the need to
queue!). It does require showing your passport and paying in foreign
currency (or showing a receipt). If you can't book a few days in
advance, then a bus is the way to go.
The Indian trains I've taken have been second class sleeper trains: no
air conditioning and no compartments -- just cubicle after cubicle with
two tiers of three opposite each other and a tier of two over the main
aisle, running parallel to it. They're not incredibly comfortable,
but at least you can get a reasonable amount of sleep. The sleep you
get on trains (and this applies to Chinese and Vietnamese ones too) is
never particularly great - the beds are hardish, and you always have a mild fear that while you are sleeping someone is going to divest you of your wallet, passport, daypack,
and shoes; upper berths are preferable to lower and middle ones since
they're less accessible. When I got on my first Indian train (Kolkata to Puri),
I was just wondering whether or not to bother cocooning my pack with my
wire mesh when all the local travellers started chaining their luggage
under the bottom bunks. I decided to follow their example.
Luggage is somewhat safer on an overnight bus; there are less people
wandering through at all hours, and packs are generally locked away.
Much as with trains, there are different classes of Indian buses - air
conditioned and non-airconditioned, sleepers with flat beds of a
similar quality to the trains, executive 1x1x1 where there's aisles
between each seat, 2x1, and 2x2. If you're lucky your seat will
recline almost fully, and the shock absorbers will bounce and sway you
over rough patches. If you're unlucky you'll have no leg room, your
seat will barely move back, the part you're sitting on will detach from
the back, and you will feel every dimple and pebble on the way.
Of course you could fly. Planes are safer - your chances of dying in a
(passenger) plane crash are minute - and they provide all the benefits
of trains at a fraction of the travel time. But -- and it's a big one
-- as a backpacker attempting to travel on the cheap, the cost of a
plane ticket in India will cover not only the equivalent train ride,
but also a week of food and accommodation. So it's lengthy trains and
buses all the way, but I can cope with that.
