Lucknow

Above: Destination Delhi

Wednesday 30th November 1983

My 25th birthday.

We were none too pleased to discover that porridge was not featured on the menu, but I settled for an omelette and George had a few Liliputian-sized jam toasts. We discovered that a coach called at the hotel at 08:30 hrs. which called at Ghorakphur, so we had coffee and waited for it to arrive.

It was a real luxury coach with leg room and a full contingent of Westerners with sunglasses and Sony Walkmans. Walkman was a brand of portable media players manufactured by Sony. The original Walkman, released in 1979, was a portable cassette player that allowed people to listen to music of their choice on the move. Its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for personal stereos of any producer or brand. By 2010, when production stopped, Sony had built about 200 million cassette-based Walkmans.

I sat next to an attractive and with warm thigh contact I fought to supress the stirring in my loins. On the journey we drove passed a man with a bear on a chain!

We made it to Ghorakphur fairly quickly, or at least it seemed so in such comfort, and headed into the Railway Booking Hall. The next train was at 13:10 hrs we were told. “Great”, we thought, unaware of the surprise in store for us. This poxy country did it again. “All Delhi trains are fully booked for ten days”, said the Reservation Clerk casually.

Pissed off, we walked to the Bus Station to be told “no buses to Delhi”, so we decided to get a bus to Lucknow and try our luck there. It was a stepping-stone on the way to Delhi and Lucknow is the capital city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, and is also the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and division.

We had a curry in the Railway Station café to cheer us up as we waited for the 13:00 hrs. bus. Our meal was only 5 Indian Rupees each, which was a pleasant surprise. We walked back to the Bus Station just in time to reserve the last two seats by me sitting on them while George battled his way to the ticket window to pay for them.

We were lucky that our seats in the back row coincided with the stairwell so we could stretch out our legs on top of our bags. This was luxury until the road started to deteriorate and the back of the bus leapt about five feet into the air with monotonous regularity.

Initially the bus was packed full and before we left we had the usual procession of beggars, hawkers and con men to add to the chaos as passengers tried to cram trunks and cases into the gaps not inhabited by humanity.

However, the bus emptied with each stop and it got quite relaxed and comfortable after we had moved forward to avoid being catapulted through the roof. We chatted through the dusk about girlfriends and “couples” at home.

We got to Lucknow at 22:00 hrs. and had ten minutes to transfer to a ropier-looking blue bus destined for Delhi. So far we had spent three hours on the Ghorakpur bus (15 Nepalese Rupees), nine hours on the Lucknow bus (31 Indian Rupees) and now we had fifteen hours of hell on this bus for the 338 miles to Delhi (61 Indian Rupees) ahead of us.

I suppose that we were lucky to get a seat on this old wreck, but we could have done without the missing window glass by our rock hard seat at the back. With as many clothes on as possible and wrapped in our sleeping sheets we shivered in the icy gale pounding us through the window cavity as we were tossed and heaved like dried peas in a tin while the coach careered along the rutted tarmac track. What a great way to celebrate my birthday!