20 years ago today – Day 332

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Wednesday, January 29th – leaving Mumbai, 17,052 km

This is the day Frank and I will catch a bus to Goa. We go for breakfast at the same restaurant and then return to the Carlton Hotel to pack up and check out. The check out time is early at hotels in Colaba Causeway because of the shortage of hotels and competition to find rooms, but we make sure we shower before we leave because it will be another grueling bus trip down to Goa.

Frank calls the bus terminal before we leave the hotel. The bus to Goa that we want leaves at 5 pm and arrives at 7 am. There is another one that leaves in the early morning and arrives around dinner time, but the first one is more convenient and gets us to Goa sooner. We are allowed to leave our loaded bikes in a storage room for a few hours while we visit the pier in front of the Taj Mahal Hotel.

We are just killing time as we don't really have enough time to explore new areas of the city. We know it will be a sleepless night so we are just taking it easy and conserving our energy. The pier at the Gateway of India has lots of activity but it is also quite possible to sit, smell the salty air and relax to the sound of the gulls' cries. We pass a couple hours here.

Afterwards, we walk through the mall in the Taj again, have a light meal for lunch and shop for fruit and sandwich supplies before we return to pick up our bikes. It is a long, stressful ride up to the long distance bus terminal through the midday traffic. I doubt there is much difference in traffic during the day, except for some slowdowns in rush hour. Driving is always zany in India. Drivers take insane risks with little or no room for errors. It is surprising that more people aren't killed.

We arrive an hour before the bus is due to leave. The bus in the bay is not allowing anyone to board yet but we don't wait in the terminal this time. We stay right by the door so we will be the first two on the bus. It is a fairly modern bus, a few years old perhaps, but in better condition that our bus from Udaipur. It is the suspension more than the air conditioning that makes a bus comfortable at this tie of year when it is not yet too hot.

The driver loads our bikes into the last baggage compartment under the bus and we take our seats near the back. The bus is almost full by the time we leave. The bus leaves the station on time and spends the first hour going north through the rush hour traffic to get out of the city. Once we leave the island that Mumbai occupies, our speed picks up and we turn south towards Goa. The highway south has the same speed bumps as the road from Udaipur. They throw us out of seats whenever the driver hits them at a high speed and we are not braced for them. My arm gets tired from bracing myself as the night rolls on. At points I slump down in my seat to brace no knees against the seat in front of me instead, but my back gets sore after a few minutes when I do thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhis.

The daylight has faded and night is coming on by the time we are beyond Mumbai. It is a pity that most of the trip will be done in the dark. Seeing the landscapes rolling by would ease the discomfort and make the torment bearable. We do the best we can to vary our positions and make the best of a bad situation.