The Magic Bus

A one-sentence summary cannot describe the bus journey I had with Chris and Daz on a local bus to Besisahar. Most individuals would have been complaining from the beginning, possibly before they even set sight on the bus or knew what was inside. I guess for me the only way to sum this particular bus ride up with one word is ‘entertaining’.

The bus first pulled up to where Daz, Chris and I were drinking chai and exclusively collected us before going to pick up the locals. While Daz was securing our kayaks and paddles on the roof of the bus I made sure we all got the good seats inside. I chose the front rows with ‘extra’ leg room and was pretty proud of my selection, especially after sitting next to Chris on the tourist bus before we got out to transfer where Chris had a lady recline her seat back so quickly it almost chopped his legs off! As she moved her seat 5cm forward and said ‘is that better?’ Chris replied ‘…uh not really, I can’t feel my legs’.

Our luxury moment of the front row with extra leg room was short lived. After about 5 minutes the bus started to fill up…..and up….and up. When we thought it was full, it wasn’t. I’m sure if you could stack people in the overhead luggage racks that would have also been an option for the bus company.

There were many things crammed into the bus, I could even hear a goat bleating from somewhere in the back (goats and chickens were expected). People then began to squish in the front around the driver, and in front of Chris and I, substantially narrowing our leg room and room in the aisle besides Chris to the point if the window of the bus was open we probably would have been pushed out.

Chris made a funny comment about the man sitting facing me trying to play footsies with me. I looked down and realised he had no shoes on and his feet were on top of mine.

We could hear Daz’s voice saying something but even though he was in the seat just opposite us we couldn’t see him anymore.

An elderly lady got onto the bus and I was in shock that the lady behind us wouldn’t move over to let her sit there. Chris thought she looked like the old Gypsy women in Drag Me to Hell. She could barely stand up along and it took a while for people to eventually move the young lady out and let the old lady sit down on a sit along with another aged woman.

When we thought the bus was at it’s maximum load the bus boy tried to haul a giant black steel chest onto the bus that seemed to have bigger dimensions than the door way they were trying to haul it through. It seemed incredibly heavy and Chris, Daz and I tried to guess what was inside. Possible explanations were: a dead body, Sinfried and Roy/David Copperfield.

The black chest just allowed a few more people to be squeezed into the bus as now babies could use the top the chest to sit on.

It was around a 30km bus ride but it took well over 3 hours. Whenever the driver saw someone he knew he would stop and have a conversation.

After a few stops a man came on and was standing next to Chris. His body was against his shoulder and Chris leaned over and said to me “I think that guy is smuggling Mars Bars in his pocket’’ ‘

’Why?’’

‘’Because there’s something hard pressing up against my shoulder’’

After an hour he was gone and a lady with her baby took his place. Chris felt something warm and wet on his shoulder and our conclusion was the baby might have peed on his shoulder.

Every now and again we would hear Daz yelling out ‘hey are you guys okay?’. We couldn’t see his version of the Magical Bus ride but I’m sure it was something pretty epic like ours.

We stopped in one village and spent 20min there while someone went shopping for a tarp. I badly wanted to go to the toilet but the driver refused to let me get off. I guess he realised I would have to climb over him to get out and now it was raining and he didn’t want to get wet. I figured there might be some ‘other’ type of rain on the bus if he didn’t hurry up and go. The thought did pass through my mind about cutting up a bottle and use your imagination for the rest but I’m sure it would have been a disaster.

We had a few more passengers on the bus. When we got to the point where there was no more visible space one lady got on the driver’s seat and sat with him for the rest of the journey.

I was pretty happy when we got to Besisahar and so was Chris (because he got feeling back in his legs again and had no more Mars or Snickers Bars pressing against his shoulder). Daz just seemed happy he could actually see us again!

So that was the Magic Bus journey to Besisahar where we would spend the night and get onto the Marysandi River the following day.

We did have another (much shorter) bus ride the following day with a bus boy who we named Prince but that’s another story.

No this isn't our bus (we didn't have enough room to get our cameras out!)