I Started Walking

It took a few seconds to realise I was utterly and completely lost…

The bus jerked over a speedbump sending me a few inches up and crashing back on to the backseat. I woke up and looked out. I had been asleep for a while, tired from the 12-hour flight that preceded my bus trip to the Hospital. It was dark and there were no lights, no traffic and all I could see was an endless expanse of hollowness. I stumbled to the front of the bus where I woke the sleeping conductor and showed him my ticket. He took one look at it and laughed. He turned to the driver and said something in the local language which I could not understand. I imagined he was asking the driver to stop. I was wrong.

I was on my way to Kargil, Ladakh, a hill station on the highway from Srinagar to Leh, once a famous Silk Route stop, and later famous as the eponymous name for a brief war two nuclear powers fought. I was volunteering at a local hospital, as a doctor. The onset of summer and influx of tourists resulted in an increased number of patients and the hospital needed volunteers. Now, I didn’t know where I was, and it took me a few seconds to realise I was utterly and completely lost. I couldn't speak the language of the bus driver and conductor, and this was a place in the Leh plateau where there was no phone reception.

I said to the conductor, ‘English? English?’

He shook his head. He got up and looked up and down the aisle, as if looking for someone who might look like they could speak English. He took a few steps and shook awake a middle-aged man sitting on the left of the bus, on a single seat. Words were exchanged and the conductor motioned me to come to them.

The middle-aged man spoke. ‘Hello. Where you get down from bus?’

‘I had to get off at Kargil.’

‘Kargil is 100 kilometres back.’ He pointed at the rear.

‘What do I do, now?’ I asked.

‘Wait till next stop. Get down and take bus back to Kargil.’

‘Ok’ The man said something to the conductor who asked me to take my seat.

I went to the back and sat, staring at the sky outside. I looked at my phone, there was no network, and to add insult to injury, the battery was 5%, discharged from the frantic automatic search for a stable network. I had no power bank, and the battered bus was built decades before seats had plug points. Outside I could see a half moon in the sky, white and majestic, a piece of celestial ivory hanging from the heavens ready to be rocked by cosmic winds. The flat plains extended for miles on either side of the dead straight road. An occasional rock would pout by the side, sometimes painted with names and love symbols in bright colours, illegible in the dark. I thought about the time when Caravans traversed these plains carrying Silk from China on its way to Turkey and Eastern Europe and thence on to the West. What would have the silent night sky told the navigators of yore? Were there any predators here, ready to pounce on the ponies and dogs that accompanied the caravans? I tried calculating the worth of silk that might have passed the road I was travelling, but it got me nowhere. My phone would have helped if it had a semblance of reception.

The bus stopped. The driver and conductor got out. They were relieving themselves in the open. An elderly passenger, probably struggling to keep his bladder under control, gingerly made his way down the steps and joined them in common cause. I made a mental note of the state of my bladder, it seemed ok. I checked the time on my phone, it was 2 a.m. In midsummer, the sun rises early in Ladakh, by 5 a.m., it is bright. I thought about where we would be at that time. The bus, which left Srinagar early in the morning, had probably passed Kargil at night, while I was asleep and would make it to Leh by afternoon. I had to wait for the conductor to ask me to get off at a place where I could get a bus back to Kargil.

I started thinking about my need to volunteer. The Hospital had reached out through a mutual contact and made a strong case for the need of my skills during the summer rush. Many tourists came from lower altitudes and needed time to acclimatise. Overzealous drivers would not give enough time for the lungs of older people to get used to the lower oxygen levels at Kargil’s height, resulting in breathing difficulties. If not treated in a proper way, death could ensue. Technically, I was going to be saving the lives of people, young and old, who made an optional uphill journey by road, to spend a few days close to the Rooftop of the World. I had worked in high altitude pilgrimages in Kashmir where religious zeal made the difference between life and death, the adrenaline pumping, to keep the heart beating, to keep the body oxygenated, to keep the person alive. A journey of leisure, with no added adrenaline, probably meant higher altitude sickness rates. I was pumped, but I was lost.

A few hours passed and I dozed off for a few minutes.

When I opened my eyes, I could see the faint traces of dawn to the left of the bus. We were headed South-East, and the sun was rising above the Himalayas, which stretched across the Horizon ahead of us. The conductor was sleeping at his seat. I walked to him and tapped his shoulder. He pointed to my seat. I went over to the man who spoke English and said, ‘Excuse me?’

‘Yes?’

‘When am I supposed to get off the bus?’

The man shouted at the conductor. The conductor said something.

‘He says you will have to wait. This is a high security zone, and they are not allowed to drop off non-locals in this area.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘This area is under curfew at night. You cannot get down here.’

I thought about the words, ‘curfew,’ ‘high security,’ ‘zone,’ and I felt my head sink into my neck. I went back to my seat and thought about my options. I could keep seated and wait for the conductor to let me out, probably from not-too-altruistic intentions, or I could just get my backpack on and dash for the door and take my chances with whatever security there was. I felt if I continue my journey, I had no idea where I would end up, and the next cell-phone reception was expected close to Leh, which was at least eight hours of drive away, as per my calculations. As long as I remained unreachable by phone, the Hospital liaison would be going crazy calling me and may even file a missing person’s report, which would be quite an embarrassment when they find me in Leh, having missed my stop as I slept.

In a split second, I took my decision.

I put my backpack on, pocketed my phone, checked my wallet for cash, putting it in my back pocket and tied my shoelaces. I walked to the conductor and asked him to stop the bus. I pointed to my groin, a universal human gesture to indicate that I needed to pee. He shook his head and pointed a finger at me. The finger pointing was angering. I went for broke. I saw a plastic water bottle by the side of his seat; I picked it up and stood next to the door and opened my fly. The look on the conductor’s face was one of shock and he started waving his hands in my face, shouting, ‘No, no, no!’ He said something to the driver, who stopped the bus and opened the door. I returned the bottle to him and got off. I could hear him mutter something under his teeth and he said something loud enough for the passengers to hear. I felt some eyes on me as I walked a few steps away from the bus into the flat sands by the road. There were a few chuckles as I sat down to pee and lost my balance and fell. Thankfully, there was no pee, and I wasn’t soiled.

It was then that I got up and made a dash for it. I ran and ran and ran in the opposite direction of the bus along the road and did not stop for ten minutes. In the distance I could hear the bus starting and moving away. The driver did not think it worth getting down to look for me or turning back to find me. I was now in the middle of the vast flat plains, with a half-moon and a rising sun for company in a high security zone under curfew. With no phone reception, no streetlights, no homes in sight, I was utterly and completely lost. I started walking.