Bruised to Bhuj

“You’ll enjoy it,” says Anis, the usually helpful hotel desk clerk. “Very comfortable. A double bed. Yes, a mattress of course. Very comfortable.” The man next to him nods and smiles.

We have been asking about the nine-hour overnight ”sleeper bus” ride from Ahmedabad to Bhuj. Have they ever taken this bus? Or travelled anywhere over night for nine hours in a “sleeper bus”? We should have asked that too. In any case the trains are full. “Can you get us a bed that is NOT over the rear axle?” “Not a problem.” Our ticket says “Seat 7 and 8.”

Ten p.m., we clamber into the bus, counting seats and beds. Three and four, five, six, seven and eight – heh, here we are, dead over the rear axle. “Not a problem.” Who would have thought that this is what was meant? We take a look, but there’s not much to see. Call it a submarine bedroom, fourth-class. And the mattress? As promised, but cardboard thin and just as hard. Then there’s the blood-soaked thug movie and its bizarre Bollywood dance numbers blasting from the bus ceiling and a speaker so thoughtfully built into our cubicle.

We’re almost settled when we launch towards Bhuj, the bus weaving this way and that through the traffic, stop and go, stop and go, our bodies tossed back and forth against the window, walls and one another, grabbing for some missing something to avoid being thrown onto the floor.

We sit up, hunched over. We lie down. Sit up again, heads cracking on the bunk above. The lights dim outside. We’re in the country, flat saltpan country, the straight smooth highway due west. Again we lie down then another double swerve and thump-thump-thump, that axle like a slingshot snapping its steely bar into our spines. 

We peer outside into the dark. They’re rebuilding the road or setting drains or putting in speed bumps. Something’s behind these stretches of barriers and washboard gravel, laid out randomly it seems, each a cunning little surprise. Nothing better to keep the nerves alert, raw. Boom! Up bounce, down thump. Mr Axle, Mr Spine, Mr Speedbump and Mr Pain … like those tag team wrestlers my hundred-year-old grandmother used to boo and cheer.

We brace ourselves across flat saltpans, ease off, settle just a little, begin to let go … then … of course, we’re at it again. It’s hopeless. Only the road and the bus and Ganesh know when to deliver the next WHACK!  We roll on our stomachs. A punch in the gut. On to our sides? A drop-kick in the kidneys, another in the ribs. Back on our backs and one wheel drops off the road, tossing us towards the aisle already full of the wounded and an assortment of wandering shoes, suitcases, boxes, a sock and shirt.

“Sleeper bus” indeed.