The Kids Are Adorable

I ran into a lot of children as I walked.

Passing a place called the Sports Complex, the little ones called out “Hello!” and “Where are you from?”

There was something endearing about kids striking up a conversation out of sheer curiosity about a foreigner.

Though when they latched on begging for ten rupees, it did wear me down.

The cutest was a kid walking toward me from the other side of the road — I winked, and he winked right back as he passed.

Behind Yellow Doors Diner

True to its name, the restaurant greets you with an actual yellow door, thrown open at the entrance.

The name sits on a lightboard above it, welcoming guests.

The letters are made of bulbs, but it wasn't dark yet, so they weren't lit.

Coming in the evening would probably feel like a warmer welcome.

The restaurant spans two buildings, with terrace seating right in the middle.

I took a seat on the terrace.

Mosquitoes went at me the moment I sat down. When I mentioned it, a staff member carried a mosquito coil around and finally set it down behind me.

That kept them off a bit.

Even the menu opens like a little yellow door.

I ordered a chocolate shake and some chicken-something pizza.

Pizza seemed to be what this place was known for.

The menu covers a lot of ground — Chinese, Italian, Indian.

The pizza arrived in about five minutes. The crust tasted like frozen-pizza dough, but the part with the toppings was decent.

And since I hadn't eaten all day, hunger made it taste very good.

The sauce seemed barbecue-based, with bell pepper, onion and chicken spread evenly on top, and everything still had bite.

The shake was terrible.

I could barely taste any chocolate.

Reasonably satisfied, I tried to brush my teeth and use the toilet, since I had no idea whether the sleeping bus I was about to board would have one.

The bathroom was too filthy for that, so I only brushed my teeth.

The staff were all kind, coming over several times to ask if everything was fine and whether I needed anything.

The bill came to 699 rupees, about 11,600 won.

Even against Korean prices, given the quality, that isn't especially cheap.

Night Streets

By the time I stepped out, the sun was long gone.

I'd heard the street dogs turn wild after dark, which worried me — but in the most populous country on earth, there was no way the streets held more dogs than people.

If anything, the dogs seemed to be the ones keeping their heads down around people.

It did turn a little chilly at night.

Around 20°C in the day and 10°C at night — a wide swing.

There are far too many cars, and the honking is something you simply cannot get used to, however hard you try.

Four women sat warming themselves at a fire in front of a building whose entrance had crumbled to rubble. That place seemed to be their home.

It was hard to look at, and it startled me — I had never seen a life stripped that far down in person.

The Bus Company

A short walk brought me to the bus company, near a big intersection.

I had booked through an app called 12Go, and the reviews gave this operator one star out of five.

The reasons were absurd.

The pickup point isn't accurate, and once you get there they text you to move somewhere else, people said.

And the schedule is whatever they feel like — some buses leave early, and for most, running one to two hours late is standard.

The moment I arrived I asked a young couple at the entrance whether this was where the bus left from.

Before anything else, the woman said:

“Never book a bus here again!”

They'd clearly already been through it. Haha.

A man was on the phone a little way off; they told me he was the owner and to ask him.

When he finished his call and I asked when the bus would leave, he barely bothered to answer.

Feeling awkward, I sat on the sofa, sorted out my bag, and struck up a bit of conversation with a big guy already sitting there.

Without that young couple and this man, I probably would have missed the bus entirely.

Talking with them, they pieced together what was happening, and I could move along with them.

The couple had arrived on time but missed a bus that had left early, and they weren't happy about it.

Still, they didn't look all that angry. Apparently this is simply ordinary here.

The couple were headed to Delhi, and so was the man.

I was going to Agra.

Luckily he was on my bus, and he looked out for me.

Tuk-Tuk

We took a tuk-tuk to a different spot.

It was my first tuk-tuk since arriving in India.

It also goes by auto rickshaw, but here, as in Southeast Asia, people seem to just say tuk-tuk.

I squeezed into the cramped back seat with the couple.

Fortunately the big guy and the couple all spoke excellent English.

The men wanted to talk about military service. The woman wanted to talk about K-dramas.

She'd loved Queen of Tears on Netflix and said Seoul was her dream destination, somewhere she had to visit.

The two men joked that Korean dramas have Indian women lost in romantic fantasies, which makes life hard for Indian men. Ha.

It was good fun.

We rode for about thirty minutes. The wind was properly cold, and we took the sand and exhaust full in the face the whole way.

We arrived at an open lot with maybe two buses parked in it.

The couple boarded the other bus, and it pulled out immediately.

The man and I got on the one that was left, where we were still the only two passengers.

He told me the bus would drive back to the office we'd just come from to pick up everyone else.

I said that was insane. 🤣

He said he'd come out here precisely because he didn't want to sit around at that office.

Fortunately, it turned out he had it wrong too.

Tracking the route on Google Maps, the bus was heading the opposite way from the office — toward Agra.

It did eventually stop at some petrol station to pick people up, but at least that was in the direction of Agra.

Loading them took a full hour, though.

So a bus scheduled for eight left at ten.

Is this Indian time?

I couldn't make sense of it however hard I tried, but I wasn't especially angry.

Two days into India, and I'd already adjusted?

The Sleeping Bus

There were about nine berths on the upper deck, and mine was the mattress at the back left. Calling it an upper deck is generous — it is essentially bolted to the ceiling.

The space was so small that climbing in felt like being packed into a parcel box.

The roads were in such a state that my body kept getting thrown upward.

Cars honked from the side at all hours, and someone even pounded on the bus, yelling at the top of his lungs — telling this hulking thing to get out of the way, I suppose.

The data was so bad that messages could come in but nothing would go out.

It trickled just enough that I could at least check where I was on Google Maps.

I took a selfie and burst out laughing at the wreck of a face looking back at me.

Maybe laughter is medicine — somehow it put me in a good mood.

I wiped my face with a wet wipe and it came away black.

Sunscreen on, smog piled on top of it, and not once had I washed my face.

I felt grimy enough to start worrying about my skin.

The honking beside the bus never let up.

Some of them slapped the side of the bus. It was chaos.

The road discipline here is the worst of the worst.

The air conditioning kicked in, and since one of the two vents was broken, there was no way to shut it off.

The air itself was foul and clammy, and I kept wondering what I'd do once it turned cold.

I managed to stuff the broken vent with a wet wipe, but couldn't seal it completely.

It calmed down some, but the foul air kept coming and the noise stayed loud.

The one saving grace was a USB port, so at least I could charge.

A sleeping bus on which I could not sleep, unsure whether I was a passenger or a parcel in transit.