I am going
to start with buses mentioned in the title and called in this specific way not
without a reason. Theoretically, they take 11 people with small hand baggage. I
think that I don’t have to mention that in practice it is completely different.
The name of these buses has its origins in the fact that they don’t have
regular timetables in almost any of the countries I have already visited. They leave
when they want – “inshallah” – “if God permits”; if there are enough
passengers, if a driver appears, or smokes a cigarette, if there appears
someone who wants to make a job on the side and has to bring 20 chairs to the
nearby village by this cheerfull vehicle.
The buses usually are in a condition
clearly indicating their wearing off (Again I have tried to write it in a more
sophisticated manner), and one must pay additionally for taking a backpack. In
various countries they have different names, for example in Ukraine and Russia
they are called “marshrutka”, in Turkey “dolmush”, etc. In Burma the public
transport included not only buses, but also auto rickshaws, so cages for
passengers pulling by single-track vehicles. In minibuses there is usually a
very cheerful atmosphere and we have already experienced many interesting
conversations there (or the attempts to make conversations in English), we
learned Syrian songs, ate fresh tangerines or smoked cigarettes with a driver
(ugh….you can’t refuse to Arabs, when they treat you, they can’t also smoke
when foreigners are nearby because it isn’t tasteful. That is why they
frequently use the so-called “gold giving”. A driver was left only with us and
he tried really hard to persuade us that the inscription LIGHT is justified by
the quality of tobacco (antidote for a few years). Moreover, in Georgia we
managed to organize quickly the accommodation for ourselves at a lady’s sitting
next to me.
What can be transferred by a bus? Everything and
everyone. Starting
from a bike on the roof, through fishing nets, rice, clothes, food and ending
with animals, and I don’t mean only dogs and cats, but also, for example, fully
alive chickens which passengers keep them on their knees. I think that the
weirdest thing ever in our lives we experienced in Morocco, while we were going
from El Jadida to Marrakesh. I would like to omit the fact that for a few hours
we tried to buy tickets for this journey and nobody could explain to us how to
do it because the village wasn’t a touristic one. When we were staying at the
“bus station” and we were trying to get into the next bus, which we couldn’t go
by, it turned out that we weren’t the only ones having problems with transport.
There was a man who stubbornly wanted to take with himself….a sheep. Yes, a
sheep. And I would like to answer your question in advance: yes, a sheep was
alive and in quite a good condition. Of course, the man ended up in our bus and
a poor animal while going in a hold was reminding aloud of its existence by
bleating on every sharp bend.
In Asia these are bikes which dominate and not only as
single vehicles. We have also rickshaws, so vehicles propelled most frequently
by the force of “rickshaw men’s” legs with seats next to them dedicated to
wretches called passengers. Apart from that, there is a huge number of
scooters, motorbikes, and any other single-track vehicles having space
theoretically for 2 people and in practice for 2 families. We decided not to
use these miracles of technique, but very often we rented bikes. I must admit
that having ridden through, for example, Mandalay, I started to perceive even
Berlin as a calm, safe, and cyclists-friendly city which is full of people
applying road traffic rules.
An interesting idea for varying tourists’ journeys have also Arabs, and especially the inhabitants of Egypt. Long-distanced buses aren’t expensive there and they usually are very good (usually because once I had to travel for 26 hours by such bus in 40 Celsius degrees with a chipboard instead of a window) as they are equipped with air conditioning. It usually functions so effectively that the average temperature inside is about 13-15 Celsius degrees. It wouldn’t be nothing out of the ordinary, but the natives, accustomed to higher temperatures, don’t mind it and they soundly sleep in T-shirts, whereas tourists who travel by this mean of transport for the first time aren’t prepared for it (that is, they don’t have blankets, jackets and trousers) and they unsuccessfully try to persuade the driver to increase the temperature in the vehicle.
Something completely different and untypical has been
invented also by the Vietnamese. Those who have already visited Vietnam know
that I am going to describe the so-called sleeping buses. The name reflects
their function as these are buses of normal size, but changed in such a way
that instead of seats, there are 3 rows of bunk couchettes inside. The price
for using this mean of transport is, of course, not high, but proportional to
the size of the sleeping place and the height of an average Vietnamese (so I
was satisfied, but Kornel couldn’t fit his feet, not to mention the rest of his
body).
I tried to recollect some interesting features of the
public transport I have seen in the South America, but the only thing I came up
with are huge (XXL) seats in long-distanced buses. Maybe they are supposed to
fit an average tourist from the continent above. Who
knows?
And
you? How do you travel abroad or beyond Europe? Have you had any interesting
experiences associated with it?
text:Ewa
photos: Ewa/Kornel
translation: Paula Suchorska
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