Ganesha's trip

I've been places, places that smell, places that rot, places that smell and rot at the same time.

Only 13 hours on a bus... I told myself I could handle it, and it really couldn't be that bad, comfortable seats (relatively speaking), only slightly tattered, and the smell on the inside was generally better than the smell on the outside. We exit the city, taking the average route of a comptetent bus driver "almost run over rickshaw driver, brush past a couple pedestrians slowing down slightly to make sure they aren't getting up to call the police, test springs by finding the largest potholes possible..." Normal busri..d...e.... Night falls, the speed increases, the amount of trucks on the road increase, motorcycles and small cars mysteriously disappear to hide until the sun brings safety again. The wolves prowl the highways of India now. Slow moving oxen (transport trucks) are too large for them to hunt alone, but this certainly doesn't stop them from trying. This ferocious struggle is the epitome of the simple game of chicken repeated over and over again all night long... the bus driver moves out to pass one of the slowmoving oxen, yet notices that an oxen actually occupies the space he is trying to move into. Rather than moving back behind the first oxen, the wolf increases to impact speed, actually manages to decrease the width of the bus, and slides around the first oxen while deftly avoiding the second one by mere milliseconds (I tried to count the seconds it took before the trucks flew past us in the opposite direction, filling the space we had just left... but I didn't have time). Style points go to those busdrivers who can actually shave paint off the passing trucks and even more extra points if you can hold a conversation with someone behind you, taking time to maintain eye contact for emphasis on key points. This game moves into hyperdrive when you have two busdrivers (wolves) who are trying to pass each other on a slightly narrower than two lane road, with oncoming traffic, in the rain... breath deeply, close your eyes, pray...

We make it to Bijapur, right on schedule, a few years stolen by stress-induced panic attacks, and slightly jealous of all the indians around us who are stretching after their pain free nights of sleep, but alive.

I missed the puddle of shit waiting maliciously for my foot as we stepped down, my friend Valeria did not. Funny though, when she took off her shoe to wipe it off, somehow it had managed to spell out 'Welcome to Bijapur!' Capital letters and exclamation mark included. It still stunk.

The streets are surrounded on all sides by pigs, dogs, cows, rats, mosques, and people, people of every color as long as you only look in the "dark brown" light spectrum. In towns sometimes unremarkable for their lack of things to see, this one looked to be quite special in this regard, yet appearances are decieving, or rather, they're not decieving, the town looked, smelled, and acted like shit, but there were some gems beneath the surface (visible for kilometers in every direction)... Ruins from medieval centuries, Moghul and Arab mausoleums standing dozens of meters tall, Mosques that fit thousands of people, manicured gardens surrounding domed stoneworked temples of impressive symmetry considering they were built almost a thousand years ago... All of this you would have been able to see, and more, except my camera is broken (anybody who wants to start a charity fund to get me a really nice digital camera so they can experience all of this vicariously, feel free)

And then the busride home, which we almost missed due to an especially delicious mouth burning meal, yet saved the torture of an extra ticket by the grace of god, a cell phone and a slow rickshaw, then 20-25 near death experiences to put me to sleep from fear-induced exhaustion.

Good fun...

More to come...

Evan