India: Mumbai to Udaipur Bus Fire

I was more than a little bit happy to leave Mumbai and get to Udaipur. Firstly though, I had to get through another 15 hour bus ride. Incredibly, the bus left on time. I spent some time writing my blog for Vietnam and then I watched most of ‘The Hunger Games’ on my laptop. My laptop ran out of power though, so I plugged it in to the socket to charge. It actually worked, well for about 10 minutes, then it stopped working. 

I decided I might as well sleep. It was about 2am or so before I got to sleep. I woke up around 3am and noticed the bus was stopped. There was some smoke in the bus as well. At first I though it was a rest stop, but with the smoke coming through the bus, I thought possibly the engine had overheated. There was absolutely no commotion, and plenty of people were still asleep on the bus, so I didn’t suspect anything too severe was going on. I took my backpack off with me, but left my laptop on the bus. As I was walking out of the bus, I noticed the driver and co-driver starting to wake people up and they were talking with much more urgency. I looked at the bus and noticed the smoke was not coming from the engine, but from the roof. 

It was at this point I realised this was more serious. A minute or so later, I could see small flames coming from the roof, and by this stage everyone had gotten off the bus and was watching close by.

In no time at all, those flames had gotten significantly bigger, and it finally sunk in that my bus was going to go up in flames. 

At this point I remembered that my laptop was still on the bus, but it was too late to save it. My main backpack was in the luggage compartment of the bus, and I assumed I would never see it again either. Only a few minutes later, the fire had gotten much worse:

There was nothing left to do as this stage but watch the bus burn, whilst taking a million photos and videos. It was a surreal experience. People were still driving past the burning wreckage until it was impossible to get past. The Indians are nuts, and they were only interested in getting a good vantage point, despite the threat of an explosion when the fuel ignited. Soon only the shell of the bus remained:

There was a town nearby, and some of the locals quickly turned up to watch the spectacle as well. Unfortunately, the fire brigade were in no such hurry. Soon the fire reached the fuel tank, and the bus turned into a fireball:

Finally, maybe an hour or so after the fire started, the fire brigade turned up. By this time, the fire was dying down of its own accord. They put out the rest of the fire:

.. and in no time traffic started driving past again.


Here's one movie I took of the fire:

Here's another movie, with expert commentary from me:

After the fire, we all sat on the side of the road, unsure of how we were now going to get to Udaipur. This was the first time I had seen any real hospitality from the Indians. Everyone was speaking in Hindi, but many of them were telling me in English what was going on. To my surprise, the bus driver turned up with my main backpack. I don’t know how they got everyone’s luggage out of a burning bus, but they did. Got to give them credit for that.

After waiting on the side of the road for 3 or 4 hours, another bus pulled up, which was also headed to Udaipur  This bus was already full, so nearly a whole busload of people crammed in the isle of this bus. There was still 8 hours of driving to go and it was not going to be pleasant. After an hour or 2, I think the co-driver noticed I was terribly uncomfortable, and offered me his seat for a while. I said I was fine, because I didn’t want any special treatment, but he insisted, so I obliged. This made the trip a lot more bearable. Eventually, as people got off, it became less crammed and some 20 hours after the trip started, I finally made it to Udaipur. Alive. 

Summary

Awesome:

Survival

Craptacular:

Watching your bus burn.. with your laptop onboard.

What's Next

The more picturesque Northern cities of India

India: Goa & Mumbai

Next I was headed to Goa, a beach town in South-West India. As the train was booked out, I was left with the prospect of a 17 hour bus to get there. This was my first Indian bus experience, and not surprisingly it wasn’t going to be easy. I turned up at the bus company’s office, where the bus was supposed to pick me up. A million buses were going past and there was nothing indicating what bus to get on. After showing a million people my ticket, eventually someone told me I was waiting in the wrong place, and pointed to a spot down the road. Eventually, a bus pulled up there. It wasn’t a sleeper bus, so it couldn’t be mine. But it might be a shuttle bus, to take me to my actual bus. I asked a guy if this was the right bus to get on. He said yes, but by this time 1 minute had passed, and the bus was already starting to pull away. I stepped on it with my backpack as it began moving and prayed it would take me to the right place. 2 hours later, I was dropped off at another bus stop. I was told to wait 5 minutes for my sleeper bus to arrive. After waiting 5 minutes, I waited another 2 hours, then my bus arrived. It actually wasn’t too bad a bus ride though. This bus had a lot of facilities: electrical plugs, individual TV screens etc. It’s India, so none of the above mentioned worked, but it’s the thought that counts.

Goa was exactly the place I needed to go at this point, to escape the hectic Indian cities. I met up with Marvin there, who I’d previously met in Thailand. In not long, we had assembled a crew of willing scooter riders and drinkers. We clocked up quite a few miles on the scooter in the 5 or 6 days we were in Goa, going to loads of different beaches. Some of the more remote beaches were quite, but the main beaches, Baga and Calangute, were filled with Indians. Indians don't look like they belong at beaches. They only ever venture into knee-high waters. A lot of them are fully clothed in the water. Anyway, here's what a beach with tons of Indians looks like (yep another panorama).

The best part for me was just cruising around on the scooter. There were some mighty narrow roads in some places, but that doesn't stop buses driving on them:

There was also the obligatory crash. British Chris managed to crash into an Indian couple, but no-one was hurt, and someone two bikes got repaired for something like $80. 

We found a place that made awesome wood-fired pizzas, so our diet for the week was pizza and beer. We went out a few times, although it was low season, so there weren’t many tourists around. I’m sure there’s more things I could write about, but at this point I’m so behind in my blogging, that I have to keep thing simple.

Next, Marvin and I were headed to Mumbai. We bought two tickets on a ‘luxury’ bus, turned up at the bus station and as always, no-one told us which bus to get one. Some stranger I was talking to told me it was our bus, so we got on. The beds looked pretty good on this bus, so I was happy. Well that was until someone told me I was in there bed. After looking at my ticket, I realised they were right, and in fact there were two tickets to a bed, so me and Marvin had to sleep in the same single bed.

I was outraged that this wasn’t made clear when I was booking, but there’s no-one to complain to in India. Anyway, neither of us slept that night.

The first night In Mumbai,  we stayed near the airport (but not near anywhere else). We somehow crossed a major road to get to McDondalds for dinner, and I tried a Chicken Maharaja Mac. It really is an insult to Ronald McDonald, that's all I have to say.

Sometime later, we met up with Brits Bharven and Chris, who we had met in Goa. We didn’t do a whole lot, because there’s not that much to do in Mumbai, but it was interesting just walking around the streets there. There’s slums, beggars and people everywhere. It’s especially bad at night, when you see so many men, women and children sleeping on a piece of cardboard on the street. Here's an example of what it looks like outside someone's place:

Being such a big city, a lot of people live in tiny rooms in rundown apartment complexes, like this:

Actually, they're the lucky ones. Many people are living in what looks like a garage, and of course many are just on the street. It really is a horrible city to be in really, I couldn’t wait to get out. 

Thankfully, we found a Westerner street in Mumbai, with McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Subway and a cinema. Our taxi driver was only too happy to drive down a one way street in order to get us there quicker. We even watched Men in Black 3 one night. One weird thing about cinemas here, is there is an intermission for about 10 minutes, halfway through the movie.

I should also mention that one day an Indian woman that I didn’t give money to started following me, and I’m pretty sure she was putting a curse on me. She’d be glad to know, it only took a day for the curse to work.

Summary

Awesome:

Scootering around and lazing on the beach in Goa

Craptacular:

Sleeping in a single bed with a guy

Chicken Maharaja Mac

Pretty much everything about Mumbai

What's Next

The bus that went up in flames.