TRAVELMAN LOST IN INDIA Takes a Bus to the Wrong City

“I’d like to go to Jodhpur by train or bus.”

“Yes, J*****ur.” Whatever the travel agent said sounded like both Jodhpur and Jaipur.

“JODhpur! ...JODhpur? Not Jaipur.”

“Yes J******R” He said just as unclear as the first time. But when I’d said it the last three times I accentuated the “D” so he must have understood. Right?

I’d been to two travel agents already that morning and gotten a run around with giving them money, coming back an hour later for the ticket, only for them to say they didn’t get it. The first guy at least told me there was a chance it wouldn’t happen. The second guy acted like it was a done deal.

I returned to the second guy to pick up my ticket. He was talking to a couple Indian citizens in the tiny closet sized shop. I stood for almost a minute until he acknowledged me. Then he asked me to sit. I did. I waited another two minutes for him to finish talking to the Indians. They left and he turned to me.

“Okay...” He said as he began searching through his phone which served as his office computer.

After enough seconds went by for me to wonder why he wasn’t simply handing me my ticket, I asked, “So what am I waiting for right now? What is it that we’re doing? Do you have my ticket?”

“No. I couldn’t get it.” He said as though it was something I shouldn’t be surprised about.

“....Ummm? But I thought you already got it?”

“No.”

Bewildered silence on my end.

He looked in his phone again, “There are other times we will check...” He began saying more about some options, assuming I wanted to continue to do business with him.

“No.” I said. “Give me my money back please.” It took calling upon all of my newly acquired yoga powers of peace and love and all that crap to keep from chewing him out. I also reminded myself that travel websites had warned that you should expect to get EXTREMELY frustrated when doing any kind of business in India. I’d had a horrible night’s sleep and I had the irritability that comes with a hangover even though I hadn’t touched alcohol in over a month, so it was hard to keep my cool. Beyond that I was frustrated with myself for not having booked the ticket earlier in the week.

He returned my money and I walked out before I did something to get me thrown in a Rishikesh Yoga jail. In Yoga Jail they force you to concentrate on the wrong chakra while you hold Frog pose for 24 hours straight.

Shanti, shanti, shantiiiiiii!

Traveling in India is not easy to do by my preferred method, the seat of my pants. It takes more early planning. If you don’t plan early you’ll probably go through what I’ve gone through a couple times- trains and busses are all booked up. Which brings me to another point- they sure as hell don’t seem to be when I board them.

I also do not yet understand why the first two agents had me come back in an hour. They’re going through the websites the same as I could do if I wanted to take the time to figure out how to properly navigate them. The ticket is available or it isn’t. Am I missing something?

I figured the second agent needed an hour to get the ticket printed out at another location since it seemed he had no more than a desk, a chair, a cellphone, and some travel posters in his cubby hole shop. (It wouldn’t be the first time on my travels an agent had to leave to retrieve a ticket).

If I was going to be here longer or if I come back, I’ll be figuring out how to book on my own.

Here’s another conversation I’ve had with travel agents more than once. “I’d like to take a train to BLANK.”

The travel agent taps on his computer (or cellphone) to check for a ticket. “You can go at 8:30 first or second AC, 1:00 first AC, or 17:45 First or second AC.”

“Okay, great. I’ll take the 8:30 first AC.” I say.

Tap, tap, tap on the keyboard. Wait. Tap, tap, tap... “8:30 is not available.” The agent says.

Blink.

“...Uh. You just said it was.”

“No... It is not available.” They say. “There is 17:45 and a... (etc, etc... and the conversation almost repeats itself).”

The most I can gather is that they are looking at the times the train leaves daily and telling me before they know if there are tickets left. But that doesn’t explain why they’d present it as though certain classes are sold out at particular times. ???

Now back to this third agent...

He hands me a handwritten bus ticket, he hands me his card, he points out a handwritten address on the back of the ticket as well as a stamped address.... He tells me to show this to the tuk tuk driver and he’ll know where to drop me in Haridwar, which is an hour away, which is where I catch the bus to Jodhpur. And he tells me to call him at the number on the card if I have any problems. I feel safe.

He’d thrown a lot of info at me. The bus ride was 13 hours, that was around the same amount of time I’d remembered seeing on google maps. I looked at the ticket and saw the HW which I correctly interpreted as Haridwar. My brain must have reached full capacity that morning. I was hot, tired, frustrated, irritated, I just wanted lunch, and I finally had my bus ticket in my hand. I was set.

...To go to the wrong city.

About a minute after being dropped off in a strange land, next to the Ganga that sported a giant statue of a blue woman holding Neptune’s pitchfork (what are those called?) and an open area of dirt, scattered cars, busses, tents, dogs, pigs, and cows, I read my ticket again. It clearly read, “HW to Jaipur.”

....”Ffffffffffffffffffffuck.”

I had asked the agent, “Not Jaipur, Jodhpur, right?” And he’d responded in the affirmative. Fuck.

It’s ironic that I had joked with a friend about the possibility of this very thing happening, but I’d made sure to prevent it by accentuating the “D.”

So what if my brain tricked me into thinking that I’d seen HW to Jodhpur on the ticket, I accentuated the “D” !!!

I tried to check google maps on my phone for the location of Jaipur. My cellphone wasn’t working. I feared that today was coincidentally the day of my SIM card expiration.

I looked at the 60 ft giant statue standing tall on a tiny island connected to the highway bridge over the Ganga. I wondered how I’d gotten there. Not through the travel agency blunders, but in a larger sense. Why was I standing in India, about to go to a city I knew nothing about.

I walked across the giant open lot/cow pasture/pig trough/bus depot/market/trash dump, then I crossed a bridge spanning a tributary of the Ganga and went into a neighborhood of Haridwar in search of my next move.

... I accentuated the D!

!steemitworldmap 29.9473 lat 78.1642 long . Lost Between Rishiskesh and Jaipur, India, d3scr

TO BE CONTINUED...