The Adventure of Travel in India!

There was an incident that occurred on my journey from Canada to my
home deep within the Himalayan Mountains of Northern India I feel is
worth recalling. After flying from Montreal, Canada to New Delhi, a
trip of 12,000 miles, half way around the world in 17 hours, it took 18
hours to travel by deluxe tourist bus from Delhi up to Kullu, which is
a journey of about 300 miles. We left Delhi more or less on time (one
and a half hours late) and the trip seemed to be going to well. We were
making really good time and it looked as if I might even get in early.
We encountered a fierce thunderstorm between Swaagat and Bhilaspur that
was so intense the driver had to pull the bus off the road for some
time. The scene in the interior of the bus resembled an old World War
II submarine movie where they had taken the sub down below a safe depth
and water was pouring in everywhere. There must have been a couple of
inches of water on the floor. After the storm had passed, we bailed out
the bus and continued on our way. The rest of the trip seemed rather
uneventful until early morning. We were about five kilometers past
Pandoh Dam when the bus ran out of diesel fuel. Now how this should
have happened is entirely beyond me. I distinctly remembered the bus
stopping at a petrol pump just outside of Delhi for about an hour to
fill up its fuel tank, so why did we not have enough fuel??? The bus
driver was slightly embarrassed to say the least. He left us there more
or less in the middle of the road to go back to the town of Pandoh and
get some more fuel and presumably return to the bus. At first I didn't
really mind as I felt I was now in my backyard with only sixty
kilometers to go to reach home. I sat on the side of the road taking in
all the early morning sights and sounds of the Himalayas. It was
wonderful for me. After a couple of hours I started to wonder what had
happened to the bus driver. Had he gone to his village to attend a
wedding, someone's funeral, or had he died himself? Another half hour
passed and I was thinking it was time to either start looking for some
place to set up residence or try and flag down another bus and transfer
my two very heavy duffel bags and continue my journey home. Finally the
bus driver returned and sure enough he was triumphantly carrying a
five-liter can of fuel on his shoulder. He was given a hero's welcome
by everyone on the bus. By that time I was beginning to have some very
bad thoughts like, maybe we should gather some wood, tie the bus driver
up to a stake and use the fuel for some other purpose rather than run
the bus!!!! Ten men assisted in siphoning the fuel into the tank. This
was really a two or three man job so with so many engineers the job it
took a lot longer. This situation is probably a regular occurrence so
the carburetor on the engine is equipped with manual primer so fuel can
be primed from the tank to the engine. After removing the fuel line
from the carburetor to the manifold and priming for about half an hour
it became apparent that, because the fuel tank was a two hundred liter
tank, five liters just wasn't enough fuel prime it from the tank to
carburetor. Ah! said the driver, "I will have to go back and get
another five liters of fuel. See you in about another two and a half
hours!!" Just then an Public Works Department truck came barreling
along the road and stopped to see if there was anything they could do
for us. Five liters of diesel was siphoned out of the trucks fuel tank
and into ours. The priming ritual was re-enacted and just as our engine
was coughing to life a bus that was passing us (we were blocking half
the road instead of coasting back a bit and off to the side of the
road) was smacked head on by a jeep that was coming the other way and
going much too fast to stop. Everybody in both vehicles poured out onto
the road and started fighting with each other. Winner is right and not
to blame, loser is wrong and responsible! With much encouragement from
all our passengers, the driver of our bus reluctantly left the scene of
pandemonium. So after eighteen hours to travel three hundred miles,
that is roughly sixteen and a half miles an hour average speed, we
reached Kullu. Now you must remember that this adventure was started
off with traveling twelve thousand miles in just under seventeen hours.
What can I say? Welcome to India. Welcome Home!