Able hands on the steering wheel

When I was planning my trek to Spiti valley in August last year, I hadn’t thought that the bus journey itself would be one of the most adventurous parts of the trip.

Travelling solo and on a tight budget, I used public transport. Having traversed the Shimla-Reckong Peo route to Kaza, I decided to return via Manali to see the amazing landscape I had heard so much about. A part of that road remains closed for the better part of winter due to excessive snowfall.

Back in Kaza, tired and content after the five-day trek along Spiti valley, I made it to the bus stand to get tickets for the 4 am Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) bus to Manali. I was told that tickets would be issued only after the bus coming in from Kullu reaches Kaza. Given the unpredictable road conditions and the moody climate, there were no guarantees that it would.

Other tourists I had met along the way had taken two days to reach Kaza from Manali as they were stuck because of multiple landslides along the way. They said that the bus could come any time after 5 pm. That “any time” could be four hours later was not what I expected.

The patient crowd waiting at the bus stand wanted to make sure they were present when the bus rolled in, so they could secure a seat for the next morning. It was the only bus on the route, and the other option for travellers were shared taxis, which costed thrice the bus fare. We kept asking the HRTC staff for information on where the bus had reached. The only answer we got was that they could not get through on the phone, hence updates were not forthcoming. But it would arrive.

Once darkness fell, every headlight that shone around the bend on the mountain road had people getting up in excited anticipation. After many such false starts, the bus eventually arrived at 9 pm and even before the passengers could get off, people started scrambling for tickets for the next day and I also managed to get one.

We were told the bus took a long time to cross the Losar nala (stream), now raging with snow melt and rain water. At that point I wasn’t worried about the fact that we would be back at the same stream in just a few hours. .

I made sure I was at the stand well before 4 am the next morning. The bus had reached late in the night so I wasn’t expecting the same driver-conductor duo to be back in action. But lo and behold, they were. The driver came, pulled out a bottle of water, quickly brushed his teeth and was ready for the gruelling ride back!

As the bus reached Losar nala , we could see why it had taken so long to cross it the previous evening. The stream was flowing rapidly over the bridge and the bus was now riding on the river bed, with no semblance of a road. With the bus rocking from side to side quite treacherously, many were holding on tight to the bars or whatever was within their grasp, holding on for dear life.

Sanjiv, the driver, navigated through it without a drop of sweat. For him, it was just another day at work, having done the reverse trip just the previous day, when the roads were in worse condition. Although that was one of the worst bits of bad road, it was in no way the last.

The Kaza-Manali journey took around 12 hours. The road was rough and broken almost up to Rohtang pass. Streams were gushing over the road and the hairpin bends were very tight. Sanjiv drove very carefully all along, his brow knitted in full concentration. Having done the reverse trip just the previous day, he found this was taking even longer because the road had become worse in the past 24 hours.

Just being in the bus, sitting comfortably on that long, broken and winding road was exhausting, I can’t even begin to fathom the level of fatigue the driver would endure on a drive that requires all faculties on consistent high alert, where an inch or a second can be the difference between life or death. And it was not an isolated experience for Sanjiv as he had done the journey many times before.

When we reached our destination safe and sound, we were very thankful to Sanjiv and his aide, bus conductor Tulsi, for negotiating the route with such steadfastness. But it left me wondering if the heroes behind the steering wheels on thousands of buses plying our treacherous rural terrain are compensated adequately for risking their lives day after day. Do they not deserve saner working hours, adequate rest and better wages for a job well done, that too in far from ideal conditions?

The writer is academic director at Shishur Sevay

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