How many girls does it take to buy Indian Bus tickets? Wow, I am so glad you asked!
So we landed in Hyderabad and spent a couple of days learning more about the Indian culture. While there we were one of two teams that had to sort out our own transportation to our ministry. Our ministry also happened to be 10 ours away.
Light up on scene 1 of Indian frogger.
We had limited wifi at the base house where we were staying, but enough to call can uber. Yes, they have uber in India believe it or not. We had a loose idea of where the bus station might be, but you know, it’s India and who knows if what is online is actual reality.
As we are on our way I am in the front seat of the smallest uber on the face of the planet, with the other three girls (Lindsey, team leader of the other team needing to make it to Bangalore, Caitlin, my wonderful treasurer, and Quinn the other wonderful treasurer) squeezed in the back. I am noticing the GPS signal on the drivers phone keeps going out. We are also getting used to Indian traffic at this point so his driving seems excessively aggressive. Thankfully we start seeing familiar words plastered on what I can only describe as overpasses, even though India really has no such things. We ask our uber driver “bus tickets”?
He gives us a blank look.
I look back to the other girls for some help but I’m met with silent shrugs.
“BUS TICKETS?” I ask again. (Because we all know that slower and louder means they will understand.) Thankfully he actually did get it the second time and motioned behind us down the six ‘lane’ highway. We thank the Uber driver, pay and start off down the side of the highway garnering unapologetic stares from all the fruit cart vendors lining our side of the street.
There were stairs leading up to large structures that we could only guess were the ticketing offices which had the names of the bus stops we had seen online. They were along what looked like a very narrow express lane that oddly didn’t have any cars on which ran directly above the highway below. They were not ticketing offices. Well, they kind of were but they were more accurately stations for the light rail that was still under construction. Under construction, as in, no tickets being sold. No people employed there as of yet to give us any direction. There were steel roller doors blocking the stairs. Funny enough we hadn’t noticed those before.
Lights up on scene 2 of Indian Frogger
We sit on the stairs wondering what we are going to do. We have 4 team phones, but no sim cards. Turns out India is very strict about their sim cards but that is another blog for another time. We cannot call anyone for help. We don’t have data to look up any more information (funny how we so readily use that at a crutch in the states). No one appears to speak any English. Until…
We turned around and saw two men who were dressed in western business clothes. PRAISE THE LORD!!
“English?” (We are fast learners.) They proceeded to tell us that if we wanted to buy bus tickets from Hyderabad to Bangalore, we would have to cross the highway and go down a little further. Perfect! That is just what we needed!
I should clue you anon some details at this point. First, India has no lane lines, there are as many lanes of traffic as there are vehicles. Second, there are not blocks of regulated increments of distance. Your best bet is a distinguishable land mark. But we didn’t know these things when we thanked the nice, partially english speaking Indian men (and quickly accumulating group of onlookers) and headed further down the side of the highway full of optimism. We had no idea how we were going to cross the highway, because I should add that India doesn’t have cross walks either. We also had no idea how much further we needed to go before we crossed. We also didn’t have a company name for the bus line. But we had more information than we did 5 minutes ago so we were didn’t really care.
Lights up on scene 3 of Indian frogger
We pause about 100-150 yards down from where we had talked to the men, suddenly realizing we still had no idea where we were supposed to be going. We knew we had to cross the highway so we figured now was as good a time as any. If you haven’t gotten an idea of what Indian drivers are like yet we will do a quick word study. Chaos. Horn before brake…yeah, that kind of sums it up.
So we look both ways (thanks mom) and notice an indian family directly in front of us starting to make their way across the whizzing tide of transportation. So naturally, monkey see monkey do. It was in that moment that we all remembered that childhood game on our windows desktops and dial-up internet that resembled a frog crossing lanes of traffic. You had to use the up, down and side arrow keys to carefully navigate our fine amphibian friend across the road without getting hit by a car. If you got hit the game was over. Too bad virtual reality frogger hadn’t really been invented then, it would have been good training.
Thanks to an unknown indian family and a healthy dose of adrenaline we made it to the other side of the highway and onto the opposite ‘sidewalk’. As we cleared the sound barrier wall and stepped into a cross street Caitlin noticed a faded sign to our left with the word ‘Bangalore’ on it accompanied by a stock photo of a charter bus.
To this day I didn’t see where she saw Bangalore, but I know a few truths about that afternoon. First, the Lord sent that indian family in their brightly colored saris to help guide us safely across the road to exactly where we needed to be. We had no idea where the ticket office was but we crossed exactly where we needed to as if we had known all along. The Lord knew all along. Second, every girl that went was pivotal to the success of our mission. I could not have done it alone, nor could any of the others. Third, the Lord is with us all the time and is protecting us every step of the way.
End Scene of Indian Frogger
After negotiating 15 bus tickets on a night bus in broken english with a lazy-eyed man we had completed our mission. All we had to do now was get back. Thankfully that was as easy as grabbing a tuk-tuk (here they are called autos) and telling him the hospital we were close to in a certain neighborhood of Hyderabad. All four of us piled in the back on a three person bench with our day packs feeling the most accomplished and immersed in culture as we had ever been.
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Prayers for the team:
– continued unity
– deeper wisdom in the Lord
– insight
– adaptability and patience for next month (all squad month)
Prayers for me:
– thanks for a gracious team
– thanks for a steep learning curve on team leading
– patience with myself as I discern spiritual gifts
– Trust in the Holy Spirit
