Freewheelin’ up to Shimla

There were no reserved seats left, so we bought a general admission ticket and hoped to hop aboard and deal with extra charges later. The train pulled in and stuttered to a stop as Jacob and I trudged along to the AC car. It lurched again after about 90 seconds and we figured that since the train was well over an hour late, it might be a quick layover. We hopped into the general class car and managed to find a couple seats near the window.

This amazing feat quickly turned sour when the train pulled ahead to the other end of the same station and about 300 more people piled into our car. They were running and jumping into the mass of people in the doorway and grabbing onto whatever they could. Our little bubbles next to the window were reduced to half seats. Bags were hung in my face, elbows rested on my head, feet were on my feet and it got hot really fast. Hundreds of sweaty people stuck into a single boxcar, breathing on each other.

We jerked back and forth across the station for about an hour and more and more people sifted aboard and settled into every little nook and cranny. Every town we hit along the way saw hundreds more people hoping to replace the 10 or 12 that wanted to get off. The train became heavy with bodies and struggled a little longer to get moving each time. As always in India, everyone was looking at us. Whenever I glanced up from my book I met eyes with everyone who unabashedly stared me down.

The seat was a piece of flat, hard plywood and my ass and legs were numb after the first hour. It took 5 to get to Ambala, where we were to make our transfer. I tried to send my mind to the mountains that we would ultimately arrive at. I thought about the cold crisp mountain air that I can remember from summer vacations. When we hit Ambala I limped off the train through the deluge of boarding passengers and into a strange little waystation of a town.

We were unable to find a bus to Chandigarh, where we would need to find a bus to Shimla, the little hilltop village that we had chosen a couple days earlier to be our introduction to the Himalayan range that we will cross in about a month. We settled on a taxi ride with a madman at the wheel. Jacob and I shared the seat in the front while 10 or 11 others were crammed in behind us in the 6 seater.

An hour later we were in Chandigarh and quickly found our way onto the bus to Shimla. It was already10:30 and the ride was scheduled to take 4 hours. We had started our day about 14 hours earlier at the rail station and we longed for a bed to stretch out in. The bus, like every mode of Indian transport, was overbooked. There were 40 seats and 55 people. I made the mistake of watching the road from the back of the bus where we were curled up and sleeping through the trip became impossible. We were on little mountain roads winding our way up, up, up around switchbacks going much too fast for a vehicle this size. From the back I was swung violently from side to side first into Jacob and then into the kid next to me who was a native of Shimla.

“I’ve been on this bus hundreds of times,” he would say as he threw up out the window over and over again. I thought back to the curry I had wolfed down in Ambala. It seemed like a bad idea now as the bus passed another car at a blind corner. The bus swerved back onto its side of the rode and I swung back into Jacob who was equally impressed with our driver’s recklessness. The only consolation was that it was pitch black outside and I couldn’t see the fall that we almost slid into at every turn.

Hours passed and my hands grew tired from clutching the railing so tightly. I contemplated religion and all the sins I had accrued over my 23 years. The higher we got the smaller the little lights looked off in the distance. I laughed outloud whenever I thought we were finally going to topple over, but none of the native Indians around me seemed the least bit worried. We crested a hill and then doubled our speed down into the station and the bus slammed into park. We were in Shimla, and the mountains, an hour ahead of schedule.