A Busride in Kerala…

…from the perspective of a european woman

You enter the stuffed bus. If you’re lucky, you get a seat, but probably you won’t. If you are a foreign looking woman, may people also offer their seat to you. Everybody wants to talk to you. Most of them cannot, because they don’t speak your language. But if they possess even only basic English skills, they will unpack them and talk to you. Mostly, they’re all asking the same questions: “Where are you from?”, “How long (are you) in Kerala?”, “Where do you go?” or “What is your name?”. Sometimes they may seem a little too friendly. You may (or may not, you’ll never know) overreact and send them to hell. Still, better safe than sorry.

But let’s start at the beginning. You reach the bus stand. There are too many buses that could crush you easily like an elephant crushes a mouse. So be cautious where to walk. They will horn, but nevertheless they would override you and may not even notice. When these huge vehicles reverse, there’s a very clever security system to prevent accidents: The conductor, standing in the back of the bus, rings the bell as long as the way is free. This same bell, that is located next to the driver and can be triggered through a cord that runs through the whole bus, is also used to signal when someone wants to get off the bus. It is exclusively handled by the conductor. The passengers who want to leave either get up, shout or knock on the wall to let the conductor know.

The trick on how to find the right bus in Kerala, if you are not able to read the Malayalam (the local language) signs indicating the destination of the bus, is to ask the conductor. On a bus stand they’ll hang around somewhere in their kaki linen uniforms.

If you’re entering the bus at it’s first station you might be lucky and have not to compete with a pack of Indian people who all want to enter the bus first to get hold of a seat. Other than in Europe there are no rules when it comes to get in the bus. There is no queue, not even a trace, you get pushed and squeezed and if you only leave a minor gap to your front man, for sure there will be a compact granny that sneaks in there to steal the last available seat. The other way around you should also be very careful: When leaving the bus, never be the last one, as you might get flushed into the bus again by the people entering.

But, for the sake of the the positive continuation of this text, we’d say you managed (probably through black magic) to get hold of a window seat. The bus starts it’s journey, you put in your earphones and your thoughts take off (at least mine do as soon as I am in a moving vehicle). That’s the part I really like about travelling in bus. Just sit, think, turn on the music and let the landscape pass by. You can just be and observe. Don’t try to get hold of anything, just let it flow as the impression will be gone in the next second and be replaced by a new one. There’s nothing that has to be taken care of until…

You get tapped on the shoulder by the conductor. He forces you to leave your own world created by the sound and the movement and wants your money for a ticket. Sixty-one rupees for a two hours bus travel is actually not a bad price. And at least in Kerala you also get an officially printed ticket with the price on it, so they cannot screw you (unless they don’t give you the ticket, but this only happened one time in Sri Lanka). So next time you know when in doubt to take the ticket first.

Being back in observing the landscape, in Kerala buses you can feel the wind, the rain and the sun directly in your face caused by a lack of windows, at least in some buses. Instead of glass separating you from the ouside world there is nothing. If it starts raining, there are metallic blinds that can be closed, but then you are literally blinded against the outside. So know where you have to get off without looking! How to accomplish that? Of course, Google maps! In contrast to the buses in Sri Lanka, which have windows but no doors, buses in Kerala have doors but no windows. The doors can be manually or automatically. Automatic doors are opened already before the bus stops to save a lot of time, and they’re also closed only after departure. Manual doors are tied with a rope, so they can easily be closed also after climbing the steep stairs.

Vehicles, people, dogs, trees, scents, everything comes and goes. That’s life, fast moving and transient.