It’s a hot summer night in Delhi. Crowds are milling about. You get into your bus towards the mountains, it’s supposed to leave at 10PM. It’s midnight now. The bus finally leaves. It’s 6 AM in the morning and you are exhausted from the heat and the acute mental stress from the preceding days. At 7AM you are supposed to be in Dehradun. You find out you are abandoned in Haridwar.
It’s a hot summer morning at Haridwar. It’s 8AM now and the crowds are milling about. The government run public transportation is a nightmare and utterly inadequate. The bus station is packed, thousands of people are sweating and sighing in the morning heat that would soon aggravate to rival the misery of seventh circle of hell!
You walk around to find cash, ATMs are empty. You try to find a shared taxi. There’s no sight of shared taxis to Uttarkashi or even Dehradun. It’s Yatra season and all are engaged as private hires. You are dizzy from not having dinner the previous night and the heat, the oppressive heat. You buy a red bull and gulp it down. You are already scammed of Rs. 300 by an auto and a rickshaw fellow, but you only feel sorry for the poor old men struggling to make ends meet.
You return to the bus station and sit down carrying over 20kilos on your person, jostling for space. After a decade of pottering around the country, you wonder, is travel in India really worth the colossal incompetence and apathy? But you have an assignment. You need to plod on.
A bus arrives at long last, hordes of people throw themselves at the bus. It's packed in seconds, even before you stand on your feet. Do you really want to fight for it? There is little dignity in scrambling for your space when the government abandons you like this. You let go of the idea to use public transportation, and book a private taxi to Uttarkashi. But before you exit Haridwar, you are now stuck in a two-hour traffic jam. You are the traffic jam, you sigh! It is Yatra season you see. The heat is oppressive even in the mountains. You reach your destination at long last. The village looks like this. Is travel in India still worth all the trouble? You’ll find out soon!
Welcome to Uttarakhand! Let the adventures begin.
