As a squad we spent our first few days in India in Hyderabad at orientation; adjusting to the time difference and learning about Indian culture. Our team, however, is placed in Bangalore, which is about an 8 hour bus ride south of Hyderabad. We were told that we were supposed to book our bus tickets out of the city to Bangalore. Easy enough right?
As team treasurer, I manage the finances. My team leader, Maggie, and I decided it would be our responsibility to book the tickets for the team. Luckily, another team was in the same predicament as we were, so we partnered up with their team leader and their treasurer. So to set the stage, four girls who have never been to India are about to try and book bus tickets.
The two team leaders asked a couple of people where we could get bus tickets. Nobody really knew, but we had an address. Off we went. We took a cab to what we thought would be a bus station. We got out, asked the driver where we could buy tickets and he pointed down the street, but we saw nothing that, in in our minds looked like a bus station.
What we thought could be where we bought tickets was closed. We tried asking around, but no one spoke English. We stopped to regroup and figure out what to do. We decided to call our squad leaders, but guess what, our international phones weren’t working. So there we were. Four girls sitting on the side of a major Indian street, completely deflated and unsure of what to do.
Quinn, the other team’s treasurer decided to pray that there would be someone around who spoke English. A few minutes after that we looked around, still trying to decide what to do. There were two men behind us in Western business clothes. We approached them and asked if they spoke English. They did, but they didn’t know where we could buy tickets.
A side effect of being an American in India is that you always draw looks or a crowd. At this moment, it is exactly what we needed. People were curious why we were talking to these men and came over. One man in particular, who was wearing traditional Indian clothing, knew where we could buy tickets and the men who spoke English translated for him. The directions weren’t great; go down the road and cross the street, but it was something to go off of.
We walked down the street and then realized that there were no cross walks or any good place to cross. We somehow had to cross 12 lanes of traffic. Now you’re probably picturing traffic where you live. Well in India there are no traffic laws; lanes are more of a suggestion than a rule. And turn signals? They just honk instead. We stood for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. We saw an Indian family near us weave in and out of traffic. So, we decided to step out and bob and weave through the chaos that is traffic in India. Once we reached the other side we laughed and one person said we had just played a game of Frogger, but instead of making sure a digital frog didn’t get hit, it was our own lives we were protecting.
Now that we were on the other side of the street we had to find this bus place. Well, it just happened that we crossed right in front of it. We walked in and then spent the next 45 minutes navigating a language barrier and finally getting tickets for all 15 of us.
We took a tuk tuk home and felt both accomplished and exhausted.
The next evening, it was time to catch our bus. We booked four cabs to get all 15 of us, plus our packs to the ticketing office. The first three headed out and reached the office fine. I was in the last car, and our driver who was very confused took us to a different ticketing office of the same company. Thus ensued part two of our bus debacle. We didn’t know if the other cabs had reached the correct ticketing office and none of our international phones were working. The language barrier again did not help our situation. Finally, I was able to communicate to the man at the office to call the other office and ask to speak to the Americans. Sure enough everyone had reached the other office and we were the only ones who had been separated.
We finally all made it onto the bus, which happened to be a sleeper bus. This meant that everyone had a bed for the overnight ride. We didn’t even know that was the type of bus we had booked. All in all it turned out fine. We all made it safely to Bangalore. It just took us a few extra twists and turns. I am now confident that I can book transportation in any country. You just have to have the patience and faith that it will all work out.
