Travel and tragedies...take 2

   And the story continues.........

There were only two ways to reach Jodhpur: one was road and the other was air. I called up my friends and started coordinating with them to find out air as well as bus tickets. New to the whole affair, we had to find our ways out. Papa has always been the 'travel arrangement person' I have never looked into such matters. But here I had no choice, I couldn't inform anyone at home as they would panic. So the mobile remained out of network for my folks at home. We figured about that the air tickets costed our two months salary, so had to drop that idea. Finally, we landed on the roadway i.e. bus route. I informed Elsa that we would get down at Surat and catch a bus from there to Jodhpur which was the most longest journey I could ever remember. On top of all, we couldn't get a sleeper seat. They say 'Icing on the cake', so I would say 'Butter frosting on the cupcake'. :(
We got onto the bus and sat onto our push back not-so-good chair seat.
I wasn't comfortable in those seats and definitely not with the 15 hours bus journey. I remember the last time I sat in a bus was for 15 minutes ( home to railway station) and now it was for 15 hours. Gosh! I had to do something. I asked my friend to sleep on my seat and I went to the driver's cabin. The driver and conductor were friendly enough to allow me to sit in the cabin. I kept my phone on charging and glanced through the highways in middle of the night.

Chai at a Dhaba

To break the ice, I started a conversation with those people and kept asking about Rajasthan.I was flabbergasted to see that our driver was quite a story teller. We told me about the Rajputs, the Maharajas of Udaipur, Jaipur, Jalore and many more. The night passed by and we kept talking about this beautiful state which hails a lot of mystery as well as history.
Morning, we reached Jodhpur and had moong dal pakoda at the district of Dhaw. It a speciality of that place says our driver. It was really tasty and less oily. I thoroughly enjoyed my morning breakfast.

Moong dal pakoda

I had my bags and Elsa both sitting in front, ready to hop out of the bus. Our adventure seems to continue... Out of the blue, one triplet biker comes in the way of our bus and on the verge of saving those people our driver rode the bus onto the divider. He somehow manages to balance and get it on the path and injures himself. Both, Elsa and I get a jerk and we land onto the desk board. Thankfully none of us get injured however our driver's hand gets a minor bruise. He insists on driving and drops us to the last stop of the journey. We thanked all of them for getting us safely to Jodhpur.
Phew!! This was quite an adventurous journey for us.