2nd June 1992 Day 318

The Diary



Due to our experiences with buses & trains we decided to take the bus from Khajuraho to Gwalior rather than get the bus to Jhansi and change to a train to Gwalior. The bus left at 9am. A similar bus to the previous one although we chained our bags to the roof this time. The bus was not so crowded, we chatted to some of the locals and slowly drank our blocks of iced mineral water. As usual the weather was hot, dry and dusty and dehydration was again a problem. We managed to get two more bottles of mineral water but that was all we could find for the journey which took 9 1/2 hours. We got through lots of cartons of mango juice, a few bottles of fizzy stuff and at a breakdown stop we stuffed ourselves with vegetable samosas carefully packaged in leaves which we bought from a stall.

Jhansi Bus Station

At Jhansi the bus was declared to be "defective" and we transferred to a bus in even worse state. By this point, halfway, we'd been going 6 hours. It looked as if we would arrive at Gwalior after dusk. Our new driver put his foot down, ignored the speed humps and potholes - it's a good job top speed is only about 40km/h - and got us to Gwalior earlier than we'd expected. Swinging round a right-hand corner in town I saw a sign for the hotel we were intending to stay at and shouted at them to stop. The bus ground to a halt, I climbed on the roof, got our bags off and then proceeded to destroy the rear ladder and bumper getting down. It's a good job the bus was a wreck to start with.

Todays scenery was every bit as rocky, desert-like and inhospitable as the Australian outback and there were villages and towns everywhere. Wide rivers had dried up to a trickle but still people seemed to be farming or trying to farm the land. Perhaps the imminent monsoon will be their saviour. Just as amazing was the number of ancient forts and temples that dotted the dusty wilderness. The Hotel Tansen was the Madhya Pradesh State tourist bungalow and was every bit as good as the previous tourist bungalow at Allahabad. Only this time the restaurant had mutton in the kitchen. We celebrated with a spicy rogan josh each. Despite the horribly long, hot journey we were still much happier than 2 days earlier. India is on the up.

A small aside: as this is the hot season and hence the low season the number of white faces around is minimal. On Sunday the only other white person we saw was someone getting on a train. Today we didn't see another white person until we arrived at the hotel. I've never been in such a minority. The locals are absolutely fascinated by white people and we can quite easily cause a crowd by just standing around for a while. People are not embarrassed to stand and stare at us. It's a good job we're not bothered by it but it must get hard for girls travelling here.


2012
I seem to remember us really getting into mango juice in India but I can't remember our preferred brands.


As I was coming down the ladder and leaning back to hand the rucksacks to Oz the ladder and the rear bumper which it was attached to, came off the back of the bus and I fell to the road still holding the ladder with bumper attached. The driver looked at me, gave me a wave, waited until I'd waved back that everything was ok and then drove off leaving behind me, Oz, 2 bags, a ladder and a bumper !!


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