Letter from South of India 1981

Driver off on the road to South India
 

The journey to the South, that is, to the tip of India, Kyanakumari, ( approx.2700km according to Google) from Delhi, in a bus with a bunch of Indians and their families, was just horrendous, unimaginable and unforgettable experience, to say the least!!!!
I started my journey on 15th May on family recommendation. If I knew what I had let myself in for, I would have thought twice about the whole expedition, the adventure, the life time experience everyone is looking for nowadays!! It was later on my return that I realised, the whole journey was in aid of annual Hindu pilgrimage, travelling to all the holy places in the South. As for me, summer holidays by the sea was all I had in mind !!!

The journey began in the afternoon from Delhi and before we even found our first resting place for the night, our driver knocked a man on a bicycle. The driver finished up in the nearby police station and the man on the bike was left to die by the road side!!! The trip was delayed for two days whilst we all waited for the replacement driver to arrive from Delhi; bribe money made sure that driver in prison was allowed to go home free of any charges!! We were stranded for two days in a place called Dudu, there were no shops, or cafés and for me, it felt like breathing in an empty landmark on the map of India. Whilst the other travellers cooked their food with all the kitchen sink they had brought from home, I had only drink salty water from the nearby well to keep me alive but instead it made me ill; Since I very little idea where the hell I was, there was no turning back for me!!

Since I was travelling own my own,  the only friends I had at the beginning, were the two drivers. It took time for the rest of the travellers to trust me and then even adopt me as part of their family and  feed me too with their home cooked meals; it was great feeling of being wanted in very unfamiliar surroundings !!

Leaving a dead body on the road side was just the beginning of my experience of travelling with a bunch of Indians and what followed next could only happen in my beloved India. My fellow travellers were middle class civil servants and their  trip was partly funded by their employer. As we boarded the rattling bus, everyday, the travellers would have  a big stand up fights with each other over seating arrangements. Their children became ill, one even contracted measles and an elderly man with heart problem requested to be taken home. Some travellers received injuries whilst travelling on the roof of the bus and one of the driver cracked his nose when he fell off the roof , luckily no visits to the hospital were necessary throughout our journey. The bus had the habit of breaking down, delaying our trip by days. Sometimes when the bus needed a kick start, pushing it was the only answer and I would often help, to the horror of the other travellers in their Sunday best!!The travellers continued to demand for better service, many requests for returning home were ignored ; two drivers had to earn their living somehow?

 

The travellers had their own 'Indian Time' system to set off each morning, we never started  our journey on time, this delayed our arrival time to the ashrams which were almost over crowded . Most ashrams had on toilet facilities, if there were some they were filthy and  had to be shared with lots of people.  I often found myself walking to the nearest water pump for a bucket job (a shower from a bucket full of water). Once, I even went and had a bucket job in a temple where there was a wedding going on and there was nobody to stop me!!
 We slept like packed sardines in the ashrams. There were nights when we were unable to find a place to sleep, the only option left for us were the  benches on the streets with the beggars or on roof tops, provided we found our way into the buildings.

We travelled through the very ,very hot summer of 1981 when it was difficult for me to breathe the  air if the bus stood still and we travelled through the stormy days which made the driving by the drunken drivers, dangerous. In the last leg of our journey between Gwalior and Agra, well known for the armed robbers who terrorised travellers and villagers, we had to be escorted by the Indian army while we all prayed for our safety.

We travelled through the state of Rajasthan,  stopping near Ajmer, then to Jaipur, Udaipur and then moved to Indore, Jalgaon; off to the state of Maharashtra to visit Bombay.....off to Goa for the sea, sun and the sand......and then to the state of Karnataka to do some shopping in Bangalore, ....off to the state of Tamil Nadu to Madurai and finally to the tip of Kyanakumari for some more sea, sun but not sand. On our return trip to Delhi the drivers brought us home from state of Utter Pradesh, visiting  Hyderabad, Allahabad, Gwalior and Agra.

 I arrived in Delhi alive and in one piece and all I wanted to do was go to sleep, like Rip Van Winkle !!!

Ten post cards, which follows this one, gives fleeting insight, into the cities and town I had visited on this journey.