We were on the 10:30 bus from Udaipur to Ahmedabad, a journey of about 250 kilometers, at a cost of 250 rupees each; about £3.50 We had a confirmed pair of seats and all we had to do was be at the start point by 10:00. We got a rickshaw and was there with our luggage at the appointed hour. I waved my ticket at the man behind the desk and he gestured us to sit. After a while it became apparent that the 10:30 bus did not exist and it turned out we were going to take somebody else's 11:30 bus. A few other people arrived, but the bulk came at or soon after 11:30. The feature of turning up late beacause the bus is always late has the effect of assuring that the departure time actually gets later and later so there is not much point in turning up on time, something these people knew but that we didn't. Anyway, at about noon a fellow waved us up and gestured for us to follow him which we did for about 250m to a gas station where was parked a rather delapidated coach. We chucked the luggage in the boot and got on. We found our seats and sat down.
The design of this bus was evidently typical for here but is sufficiently unusual to warrant a description to help you visualise the rest of the post. Basically the coachbuilders take a single decker bus and put in maybe 30 seats in the middle of it with an off-centre aisle. Then they build a mezzanine over the seats and section it off into 6 feet long 20 inch high boxes with a sliding door and a ladder. They fill the remaining floor space with more of these 'coffers' ,which are aparently sleepers cabins. They then build a box behind the driver that four or five people can squat on and then they put like a perimeter wall on the roof (more on this later).
It was clear that there were many more passengers than places. It took an hour for the guy allegedly in charge to work it out. The solution was that all the sleepers would be doubled up and the remainder would sit in the aisle. So the single 6ft x 20" x 30" sleeper had two occupants and the doubles had four, laying alternately head to toe. We set off with maybe 12 people in the aisle, plus a further 5 standing in the doorwell, and another five sat behind the driver. Slowly at first with the engine, which sounded like a world war two tank, protesting angrily at the effort, we gathered momentum until we reached what felt like warp factor five and there we stayed, airhorns blazing every 20 seconds, until the driver was forced to stop the bus - would you believe to take on more passengers. This pattern repeated four further times until there were too many people in the aisle to count. They were squatting, sitting, standing and hanging on the ladders to the now 4 berth sleepers. The bus now lumbered, being clearly overladen, and struggled to get to warp factor five. But get there it did in the end and once there nothing was going to stop it. The major part of the journey was spent on the wrong side of the road until, after two hours we stopped at a roadside 'restaurant' for a break. It was only at this time that I realised the purpose of the additional 10" high wall on the roof. I'm afraid not dear reader, putting luggage up there would be far too simple and quite unreasonably safe. Up on the roof were another 20 pasengers. All in all I'd estimate that in excess of 100 people were on that bus.
We carried on at breakneck speed, all guns blazing, until we reached the outskirts of Ahmedabad. I had consoled myself with the last of my stock of Rajasthani samosas en route and hoped for a safe deliverance. I was glad to alight still alive and we grabbed the luggage and got a rickshaw for the 30 minute drive into the centre of town.
One thing on the upside though - the seats were really rather comfortable
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