My Wednesday

In a year of travel that includes a handful of around the world flights, twenty-passenger flights in the mountainous regions of Papua New Guinea and a vomit-filled boat ride from Melbourne to Tasmania Wednesday February 7th may go down as the most traumatic transportation day of the year. It all started innocently enough getting to the bus stop 15 minutes early for a bus to class which came 30 minutes late not unusual for India. The bus had the population density of an NYC subway at rush hour and the smooth ride of the aforementioned boat-trip to Tassie. After holding on for dear life for the 45 minute ride. When the time came to get off I thought it was time to get off one stop before the rest of the group did. The guys ride in the back of the bus and the girls in the front and I didn't have a map so there was a miscommunication and I got off one stop to early. I should also mention that Indian buses don't cautiously wait for everyone to get off or have doors so I had to hop off the bus as it was sprinting away only to realize that no one else in my group had gotten off. Since I didn't have a map I sprinted after the bus to try and catchup with my group. I ended up on the wrong side of a bust street from the group. My father always told me to observe how the locals cross the street and follow that. Apparently that advice can't be followed halfway as I walked across half the street next to an Indian man. He then crossed the rest of the street but I didn't think I could make and 30 seconds later the direction of traffic changed and I ended up caught between two flows of traffic without the benefit of a divider. After I couple heart-wrenching minuted I somehow made it across. My travel adventures weren't done yet however as after a few hours of lectures I had an assigment to go to a market and purchase some vegetables. The only problem was they gave us the vegetable language in Kannada the local language. We tried to take a bus to the market but after waiting 45 minuted we concluded that the bus wasn't going to come so we took a rickshaw. The 45 minute rickshaw was an adventure in and of itslelf with a ground level view of the Bangalore streets complete with a half-dozen near collisions and viewing all kinds of crazy contraptions people use to transport goods and other people including prisoners. We finally got to the market which was awesome with all kinds of crafts sold for next to nothing.