(fast forward from Delhi ahead two weeks to Goa)
I decided to split up my last five days in Goa (and in India in general), spending three of them on a side-adventure to Hampi, to wander the rocky ruins of the Vijayanagara empire. Even though Hampi isn’t very close to Goa, I planned to buy myself more time by journeying via overnight bus. The beauty of overnight transport, in theory, is that you cover the cost of lodging and transportation in one purchase, and have no need to bother with finding a hostel. I figured it would kind of be like taking an overnight flight, but waking up without the jet lag. After my experience traveling by train in Rajasthan a week before, I thought that an overnight AC sleeper bus sounded posh, but I later found I was in for something far different.
Virupaksha Temple, and the unique, crumbly mountain landscape of Hampi
I attempted to book my bus ticket to Hampi a couple of days in advance, but none of the transport agency websites would accept my credit cards, so I went to a local travel agency to go about booking my bunk. While at the counter, a British gal about my age walked in, and we soon found out that she and I were trying to book tickets to the very same bus. Her name was Luisa, and she had recently arrived in Palolem by way of Anjuna, a popular destination in Northern Goa. Happy to have found a friendly face with which to share the upcoming overnight bus journey, we exchanged contact info so we could meet up again before we departed Palolem.
Luisa and I stuck together for the remaining day and a half before departing, and organized a gathering of other travelers at our hostel to go out on the beach for dinner that first night, and then a day trip north to Agonda beach the next day. Six of us crammed into a cab and spent the afternoon relaxing on the serene beach until a herd of cows moved in to occupy the sands. After returning in the evening from our brief visit to Agonda, Luisa and I packed our bags and prepared to take a rickshaw further inland to where our bus would arrive. It was fully dark when we arrived in Canacona, a settlement far from the beach that I remember mainly as an undistinguished tangle of congested dirt streets. We stood in a small and flat lot with dozens of other travelers ready to depart on overnight journeys across West-central India. It was far from glamorous. While we chatted with our soon to be fellow passengers, a cow sauntered into our circle, prompting everyone to scramble to move baggage out of his way, right before he let rip a stream of urine to noisily splatter on the pavement below, all the while wearing the same dumb facial expression. This was about how the rest of the night went.
At Agonda Beach with friends from Palolem: Jenna (USA), Josephine (Sweden), Luisa (UK), Steph (USA), and Ana (Spain) Left to Right
After watching several different tourist buses come and go, ours finally arrived. We had been tracking the bus via text message notifications, but our initial bus number had been switched out to another one at some point, so the number we had on our passes was now different than that of the bus that was actually headed to our destination (it’s just a given in India that your travel plans will never go quite as smoothly as you envision). The bus to Hampi had already picked up passengers in several other stops along the way, so the baggage compartment underneath was full, forcing us to carry our packs through the narrow bus aisle, and store with us in our respective twin-sized bunks, meaning that almost half of my available sleeping space was occupied by my personal belongings. The bus had two levels of bunks stacked on top of each other, with the upper bunks like mine feeling like an elongated dish cabinet that I had to awkwardly hoist myself up into. My bunk was situated toward the middle of the bus, whereas Luisa’s bunk was up front, so I didn’t see her at all for the duration of the journey, though we would check in on each other via text message occasionally throughout.
Traveling India in an overnight sleeper bus is not as exhilarating as it sounds. First off, the bus was far from comfortable. It was a hot night, so the dark and dank bus interior felt pretty sticky, and even without the heat, you got this feeling that it likely didn’t get a good scrub session in between loads of passengers. I made the mistake of peering into the vent that was spewing chilled air just inches above my face, and turned on my flashlight to reveal vent shades that were caked in filth. I promptly closed both vents in my bunk, considering holding my breath for the next eleven hours, and looked over at the passengers next to me, who were blissfully fanning the conditioned air into their oblivious faces. Next, the surface you slept on wasn’t a mattress suspended over a springboard as you might find at a hostel, but was more akin to one of those cushions you sit on at the doctor’s office while being examined, and it was supported by a metal frame. It was suitable for a couple hours of support, tops - much less an entire night’s sleep. It was uncomfortable enough BEFORE the bus started moving, but once we finally got underway, things were even more difficult. For eleven hours, this vehicle full of bodies was traversing primitive, rural roads - hitting large bumps at speed, and taking frequent and oddly abrupt turns. We were being jolted and jostled so much, that I imaged the only explanation was that the driver must have had a Kingfisher in each hand, controlling the wheel with his feet and looking for an appealing ditch to send us all into. The bus took three or four bathroom breaks over the course of the journey, at no particular discernible interval. Just an abrupt stop, and a incomprehensible shout from the driver, followed by a rush of passengers shuffling uncomfortably to the front. I never got out at a single stop, mostly just to spite the bus itself. I knew that if I got out and stretched, it would be pure misery to crawl back into the little nook I had occupied after having a taste of halfway fresh air and personal space.
And so the night passed, and I passed into a slumber that teetered on the edge of consciousness. I’d awake every ten minutes or so with a sore back, and then shift to my side to try and sleep until it was no longer comfortable, and then shift back to laying on my back. It was similar to the quality of sleep you experience on an airplane, although you’re instead laying in what feels like the trunk of some grimy car that has just had its shocks slashed.
Eventually, after some amount of hours had passed, I could tell that the sun had risen as I could see the sunlight streaming through the curtains of my small window. We finally came to a complete stop, and the driver started yelling to all of the passengers that it was time to unload the bus. He had absolutely no patience - it was as if he was convinced that none of his passengers had undergone an exhausting eleven-hour series of convulsions and could just hop out of our bunks without first checking to see that none of our limbs had been dislocated in the night. I rose from the bunk like a zombie, and shouldered my packs in the tightly confined aisle while the driver continued to shout, and then found myself stepping out of the bus into a strange, blinding sunlight and a screaming sea of hands grasping at me and my bags. The hands belonged to a small army of cab drivers who were competing for our business as tour guides for the day.
With my eyes slowly adjusting to the fierce morning sun after a long night in the dark, I made it through the crowd and found Luisa. We exchanged knowing laughs, and prepared to set out upon a full day of exploring Hampi.
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Photos from Hampi:
Lush rice fields of Karnataka surrounded us when we weren’t in the midst of ruined temples and markets
Bananas as far as the eye can see
First stepwell I had seen since Jodhpur
Luisa posing for a photo