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