On the Buses - Leap Day Special Episode

Just as we are about to switch the lights off last night a message comes in to say that D's phone top up has won him a bonus Gig of data FOC. We will have to go some to burn it off in the two weeks that ee have left in India.

Breakfast at the Kapil is room service, is delivered promptly and looks great. It also tastes great. D tries a little experiment in fusion cuisine and can report that aloo paratha spread with marmalade is excellent. R remembers to take her Stugeron for today's road trip. When we check out our bill is ready and our taxi ready for us. The Hotel Kapil will be our Shimla choice when we get round to writing the Radinja Guide Book.

D read somewhere that Shimla had 30,000 people in 1930 and now has ten times that. The city sprawls up the sides of mountains and deep down into valleys. In some places the slopes are so steep that there are little bridges to allow cars to be parked on the rooves of high rise apartment buildings. Some work has been done to improve infrastructure but away from the vehicle free centre there is a lot of traffic congestion. Our taxi negotiates this and delivers us to the new bus terminal in good time. This is below the main city and looks to have been built by hacking away some mountainside to create a ledge then building out from here on stilts. It has that grubby seedy air of bus terminals everywhere but isn't as bad as the Port Authority Terminal in Manhattan. At least you can see out of the Shimla one. 

One of our top secret insider confidential sources in India has assured us that long distance buses are a perfectly reliable and comfortable way to get around those areas in northern India that have lacked the wisdom to build railways.  It is this assurance, rather than the fact that two tickets were less than a quarter of the price of a hire car, that has been the crucial factor in us making this trip today. There is a short wait for our HIM Garav Tata A/C vehicle to arrive. When it does it is painted in a rather sickly shade of green. Presumably the Himachal Road Transport Corporation got a job lot of paint cheaply. As we have luggage we are waved to the back of the bus where the luggage compartment is located. We offer our rucksacks and D's giant size one immediately has chalk hieroglyphics scribbled on it but the two men loading have a difference of opinion about R's smaller pack. One wants it to go in while the man actually doing the work is adamant that it should go inside the coach. He wins out and then turns to D and says "Give me ten rupees". Nobody else seems to have been charged but it was worth it just for the entertainment. 

We have allocated seats and soon get ourselves comfortable although R's pack has to go in the aisle and D has to lift it out of the way every time that somebody needs to get by. A young woman gets on and seems to want to dispute our right to occupy the seats we are in. How stupid of us not to realise that the appropriate numbers are on the backs of our seats. We move one row forward. We look around the coach. It is well on the mingin' side of grubby causing R to remark "Not so much Tata as tatty".  The seats are starting to fill. The young lady behind is is accompanying a man who looks old enough to be her great grandfather.  There are two Tibetan monks and several young couples including the one immediately in front of us. She is wearing a ludicrous knitted pixie hood that a three year old would be ashamed to be seen in. They both have electronic devices plugged into their ears so communicate by shouting at each other.

At 9.30 prompt the bus moves off only to stop at the exit to the terminal where a cheerful looking young man gets on. He turns out to be the TTE who, after checking all of the tickets, comes round handing out sick bags. Oh goody. Progress out of Shimla is painfully slow as the roads are narrow, the traffic heavy and some of the parking inconsiderate to the point of criminality.  This town needs a good dose of yellow lines. We take the road out towards Bilaspur, heading roughly north west, and finally clear the city. There is an unexplained stop for a few minutes after which the A/C is switched on. We need it as the sun is now quite hot. The road pretty much follows a contour line but as result twists and turns its way in and out of every valley and gulley. In the normal course of events this road is just about wide enough for large vehicles to pass each other but all along it a trench is being dug by hand so that blue conduit (broadband cables?) can be laid. The spoil from the trench is dumped onto the road surface meaning that there have to be careful manoeuvres every time the bus meets a truck or another bus. We now realise that the unexplained stop was for the driver to change into his lead boots as whenever the road seems clear he really floors it, hurling the bus round corners and throwing us from side to side. It is all to much for the old boy behind who brings his sick bag into play.

After an hour and a half there is a stop for a chai break then we are back on the road, still contouring. We switch to the other side of a ridge and see a broad valley below. The road starts a long descent but then the traffic just grinds to a halt. There is a particularly narrow twisty stretch, where the trench digging seems to impinge more than usual upon the road. A face off ensues between a truck ahead of us and a coach coming up the other way with a couple of small cars jammed in between. The TTE gets off and with his counterpart from the uphill bound coach endeavours to sort things, a process not helped by the endless stream of motorcyclists who insist on threading their way through the jam. We are going nowhere.  The engine and A/C are turned off and we sit there slowly stewing.  After about twenty minutes a copper appears from somewhere and manages to get us moving by insisting that the up hill traffic reverses quite a distance.  Some of the car drivers don't appear to have ever reversed before the way that they go about it.

 We get going again, still descending into the valley, through a belt of cotton trees. These look rather odd to us - all vivid red flowers and no leaves - but quite beautiful. The couple  in front of us start to get  affectionate. What's the Hindi for "Get a room!"? Having reached the valley floor we immediately start to climb the other side. D works out that we have done slightly less than 60 km in three hours. Only 200km to go! The ascent of the far side is not as long or steep as the one we have just done and there are stretches of level where the road runs along a ledge with a long, steep drop immediately beyond. The driver seems keen to makeup for lost time and is soon powering his way through the pack, overtaking on blind hairpins with oblivion only inches away. D recalls the short newspaper paragraphs read on previous visits mentioning buses in Himachal Pradesh plunging into ravines with predictably fatal results for the occupants.

Unexpectedly we turn off the main road onto a side road that is mainly devoid of traffic and the foot goes to the floor. It's all too much for the man behind who throws up again. This road is a short cut that takes us through to National Highway 21, a much better road than any so far until we hit a stretch where it is being widened to four lanes. Pro temps there is a baked mud track through the works that goes on and on. Part way through we pull up at a Dhaba (or is that Daba or even Dhabba). A twenty five minute lunch break is announced. We use the facilities, take a look at the flies in the dining room and opt for two black chais. They must have had to look up how to make this as it took so long and when it did come it was in dubious looking cups and had traces of milk in it. 

Once we clear the roadworks we make better progress, stopping at a small town where the old man and his companion debus. Before too long we are at Mandi, quite a big place where a few more people get off. The bus is now about half full and we can have a window seat each. From Mandi we pretty much follow the Beas River which looks quite benign today but which has a fearsome reputation for flash floods. Two years ago a party of 25 students were swept away and drowned when water had to be released from a hydro electric scheme further up river. There are frequent notices along the road warning of the danger. The river valley starts to narrow and we cross a dam before climbing high up the valley side. The valley narrows until it is very reminiscent of the Gorges du Tarn, just with bigger mountains. The view is made even more atmospheric by the dark clouds that have rolled in and repeated flashes of lightning. 

The road takes an abrupt left turn into a tunnel that goes for about 4km but not in a straight line. We emerge into steady rain and half an absolutely heart stopping moment when the driver slams on the brakes to avoid hitting a cow and the back end of the bus slides out across the road.  Luckily nobody is coming the other way or trying to overtake. We make good time as far as Kullu where the bus makes a detour into town and some of the remaining passengers get off. The clouds part to reveal snow capped mountains as the light begins to fade. The major obstacle now to progress is our steed's chronic lack of power when climbing. We crawl up hills and then shake, rattle and roll down the other side. Soon there are more lights then lots of hotels and finally we see a brightly lit pedestrianised street ahead. The bus turns right then left and we are at Manali bus depot. The trip takes nine and three quarter hours.

We recover D's pack and look for an auto. We take the first one who wants a hundred to take us to Johnson's Lodge. We have no idea where we are going and expect to get ripped off. The ride is about 400 metres. We step into reception to be greeted by a man who seems surprised to see us. We are at Johnson's Hotel not Lodge. Luckily they are next door to each other and he kindly walks us back down the street to the correct place. At check in the chap tells us that he has got a good room for us and so it proves. Up on the top floor it is more like a suite with a kitchenette, sitting area and a simply enormous TV. The man shows us the switches and plugs in the electric fire. It seems a bit parky but we leave the fire on to warm the room. We are shattered, thirsty and hungry so we drop the bags, wash our hands and head downstairs.  

This is not your normal Indian hotel. The ground floor is a sort of combined sports bar and restaurant,  with high stools at the bar and loud western music. We order beers and peruse the menu. R asks if the music can be turned down a little and her wish is granted. The menu is a bit pricey but we are too tired to go out again. We order Chicken Biryani, Dal and Nan bread which is surprisingly good and the portions are huge. We could have fed another two. On the TV cricket coverage has given way to kabadi. A man at the bar is trying to explain this to an American. It seems to be tig with violence. D is confused by the lack of a ball. There is a DJ due on at 9.30. No partying for us tonight, it is straight upstairs to Bedfordshire. The room is still quite chilly. When we look behind the curtains there are three windows wide open. We shut them and  leave the fire on.

PS - We have never been so far from a railway station in any of our previous visits to India.