5:16pm

Bit of a debacle, today was. So last night we went for our 8p check-in for our 8:30p bus, which then turned into an 8:30p check-in for our 8:45p bus, which I think ultimately became a 9:15p departure. India!

But the fun started when we got on board and started looking for our sleeper, berths “11 and 12” when the sleepers were labeled “A, B, C…” etc. And with great horror and dismay the person who showed us where our berth was (one of all of them who spoke no English whatsoever) walked all the way to the dreaded…BACK of the bus.

Now, we’d already sworn off buses after the launch-y ride INTO Udaipur. But when we found out we’d have to take another night bus ride back out of Udaipur (why is this starting to seem like the epic trips into and out of Leh?), we conceded, consoling ourselves that at least we’d booked a seat up at the front and would maybe be launched only an inch on every bump instead of a foot.

Ray’s been pretty good about the whole foreign-travel thing. I think you’d be hard-pressed to start your traveling career as a greenie like himself with a more initiation-by-fire place than India. The customs are different, the gestures are different, the dress is different, the language is different, the writing is different. Maybe the only thing harder would be a place where violent crime is prevalent and/or a warzone. I’ve not yet been to Africa or the Middle East, but for where I have been, I can vouch for Ray and say he’s pretty bad ass for taking his first international foray into the non-resort-package world by jumping right into the deep end with India. There’s only one thing he can’t stand here. He can’t stand being laughed at.

So step back onto our bus for a moment. There we are, bags in hand, looking down a long aisle with huge packages of crap blocking the way (because there are always big sacks of something or another blocking the aisleway of these buses – this time it was textile materials, and this time we didn’t bother trying to step around them since the locals didn’t either). Ray’s a pretty docile guy. But when he saw that we were not only not in the front, like we’d been assured we’d be, but at THE very back berth – AGAIN – he wasn’t going back to the suicidal bus-gallows without a fight.

Not even a fight, really. We politely tried to tell them that we’d been assured we were booked on a compartment at the front. The first guy who had pointed out our berth just said Yes, yes, back here. No, no, up here. No, no, back here. Omg. Ray tried to appeal to the driver(s? as there are always at least 3 people up there in the peanut gallery).

Now, especially being American and from a country that is so adamantly “they’re in America, they should speak English” and is correspondingly vastly mono-lingual, I understand that we should speak some of the language, and I am trying to scramble to learn it as much and as quickly as possible before it is completely obsolete to do so anyway (since there are a bajillion dialects and sub-languages and we’re about to leave the Hindi-speaking region altogether anyway). But I understand that since we don’t speak their language, we deserve to have a difficult time getting around and getting things accomplished the way we’d like. That comes with the territory, and that is fair.

But I don’t care where you are in the world, what culture you’re in, or all things being culturally relative…there are some ways in which a human being is just unilaterally and unequivocally an asshole.

Ray wasn’t being a jerk; we’d been told one thing when we’d booked the damn bus and now we were being told something different (and wretched) now that we were boarding it. He wasn’t yelling or screaming or throwing a fit, all he said to the guy was that we were supposed to have been at the front, that that was what we’d paid for. The guy says something in Hindi, presumably translating for the rest of the peanut gallery what Ray had said (ah so you do speak English), and they all – not just chuckled, but ERUPTED – into this leering, spiteful, uproarious ass-holey laughter.

I’m pretty good at being forgiving of people, especially at times like this when I know we’ve put ourselves in our own position of vulnerability with our ignorance such as with the language, but come ON. You don’t have to speak Hindi to know that guy just said “I am the world’s BIGGEST DOUCHEBAG and there is a special place in hell waiting just for me!” and the others joined in with a raucous chorus of “Hahuhuh yuck yuck yeah us too! We’re going to be reincarnated as slugs in our next life and deserve every inch of the shoe sole that stomps us!”

Readers of all nationalities, take note. Americans, us especially because this isn’t an attack on Indians, this is a complaint about jerk-people and there are plenty of us back home too. I’d like to believe that hopefully when we encounter stuff like this, we are at least restoring some karmic balance for all the American jerks that engage in racial slurs, prejudices, and stereotypes. So please don’t add more. For god’s sake, treat your visitors kindly. If a foreigner is lost, go out of your way to help them out and find their way. Even if they’re not lost, go out of your way and be welcoming, friendly, hospitable. Even if they don’t speak English (yet). It’s not easy being in a foreign place, where everything is upside down and inside out and insane and crazy. If you don’t appreciate what they’re trying to accomplish by being there at all, which is more likely than not to try to make themselves a better person, fine. But there’s never a reason to make them feel like that made us feel.

There was no good place to go from there when that happened, so for as much as we wanted to further our cause to save ourselves from 11 hours of utter hell – or at least deck the guy in the face (call us hockey players), in case Ray was going to continue the good fight for the sake of being a good-husband and wanting wifey to be comfortable, I gave him a small head jerk and said it was fine, they weren’t going to do anything but stand there and unravel their reincarnation evolution, let’s just go and not subject ourselves further to this humiliation. (Somehow, it feels humiliating just to stand anywhere as the only white people in a one-mile radius as it is, with all those eyes staring at you constantly, let alone this. We try to tell ourselves it’s just curiosity and a cultural difference, like the books say. But it bleeds the self-consciousness out of us til it sure feels like judgment sometimes).

So, resigned, we went and shoved our stuff into our cubby hole. I tried to cheer Ray up by pointing out it was a much nicer mattress and cubby hole than the last one, with glass window doors instead of curtains. He tried to be cheery back, but about five minutes later I had to say to him, “Honey, it’s ok. Just let it go. Your blackness is getting all over our compartment and making a mess.” He stewed a few seconds longer and then mostly let it go, which was good because his dark cloud of what must have been daggers and arrows and such that he was shooting up at the front of the bus was seriously crowding our compartment that was already small enough.

The ride, predictably, was the worst yet. At least 4 occasions saw my entire body flung off the mattress straight up into the air (but at least I didn’t hit the roof – always look at the bright side?), and the shoes that were in the bin above our feet were lifted out and came down to smack our legs multiple times. And I swore a couple of times that we were going over for sure, because I had to grab onto Ray to keep from crashing through the glass wall onto the floor. I remember feeling surprised though at how, despite clutching on til the bus righted itself again, I pretty much just kept calmly laying there, either sleeping or dozing or foregoing either and just existing in my bubble of happy-place sphere (it’s padded).

For as unpleasant as some of these days (or nights) and experiences of this trip are, I know without a doubt it’s going to pay dividends a million times over back on more familiar, comfortable ground. I’ve known it before from even my milder past travels, and Ray’s said already, he knows that back in America, where we speak the language, know the customs, know how things are SUPPOSED to work, know how to use all these things most effectively, a) “NO one is going to f with us”, and b) nothing, absolutely nothing can stand in our way. At least nothing that we have a say in. And for the things we don’t have a say in, well we’ll know full well how to deal with that and make the best of it, at least. We’ll be used to that much!

So, another notch in the belt of “well, THAT was a crappy experience”, but we’re better for it. But please, go call or write any foreigner you know in your country right now and just tell them you know it must be challenging sometimes and they’re doing a good job and you appreciate them being there trying to learn about and experience your country, and is there anything you can do for them to make their stay pleasant? And by the way, if you’re still at all hung up on the “couchsurfing” concept or wondering why we would ever go stay with a “stranger”…it’s because those are the people who are doing that for us. People are pretty awesome. It’s just that that particular batch of drivers on that bus were pretty average.

Don’t ever be average.