Our weekend in 36 hours

Saturday at 6pm we board a bus to Arangabad. We travel bumpy, bumpy roads, parting seas of goat, jostling by 6 ft pyramids of watermelon for sale, the bus driver sounding the musical horn beneath his good-luck-garlanded windshield. Snuggle down, it's a long ride. Can't read, the light won't come on, so we eat take-away dosas in the dark (still not sure what "rava" means, even though I ordered it) and flashing brightness of the bootleg of a Hindi film about China which is only intermittently audible and scarcely comprehensible.
Our window won't close, it's 1AM and we're FREEZING. Some guys are sleeping in the aisle. Bartley goes to do so, too, until I wake up and foggily drag him back up to the seat. Somewhere in the early hours Bartley takes a blanket he finds up front and we get under, irregardless of this blanket's history. Wake, sleep, wake, confused, drowsy, confused, cold, sleep. no dreams.
Last stop! Aurnagabang-- it's 5:30 am, welcome, get off the bus! We stumble out, rubbing bleary eyes, not sure which way is up but we're walking towards it, maybe. Towards what? I forgot. Ok, buy tickets to go back home tonight-- done. Auto driver wants to take us to all the sights for Rs 400-- ok, but please can we pee first?
Our new friend takes us to his friend's motel as lavender streaks across the dewy sky and we're thankful for the dirty facilities as long as it means we can brush our teeth. Breakfast-- kichiri and "coffee", which tastes more like melted coffee ice cream.

The sun is up but we're down and dozing the whole rickshaw ride to the Ellora caves. Neither of us remembers how far we went; temporarily narcoleptic.
Great ancient stone Buddhas have been patiently sitting in caves. Inauspicious exteriors lead to extraordinary interiors, like weathered ballrooms, only all sliced from solid stone and made holy. Many hawkers eager to sell us guidebooks—we tell them, in Hindi, that we are illiterate.

We make friends with a class of 6th graders who all want to shake our hands, a lone Indian tourist from Hyderabad who accompanies us awhile, and a smiling set of middle-aged men who are delighted by all. A young girl says hello and asks (in English) my name. I respond in Hindi and her dad chuckles all the way down the path-- "Apka nom! Ahaha!"

We want lunch, our driver has other plans. His name wasn't Eli, but it sounds like Eli, so, Eli wants to take us to a mosque. Eli does this everyday, so we’ll go where Eli wants.
We take off our shoes and get a short tour from devout Muslims who can’t look me in the eye or let me enter one of the holy tombs (but I am permitted to listen to the history from outside). Everything is blindingly white in the noon sun, the marble is surprisingly hot underfoot, and two boys are hard at work on top of a dome, scraping it clean, barefoot and covered in white dust.

Time for a thali—daal, curd, curry, rice, paratha, mango pickle and another of the dirtiest bathrooms ever, uuugggh, but, too bad, there aren’t other options.

Next Eli takes us to a "silk factory"-- really a shop for saris and runners and shirts and samples of silk with a handloom for show, and they are all very disappointed that I am not buying anything today, after they have unfolded prisms of patterns unto the table before me and regaled me with the process and properties of each ray.

Next, we’re whisked to the “mini-Taj” (or Bibi-ka Maqbara), actually far larger than it sounds, and in fact a breathtaking white marble bubble that bears close resemblance to its namesake, having been designed by the same architect. We climb a mango tree (fruitless, sadly) and meet three young Aurangabadis who take a lot of pictures with us, and then tumble into conversation with an older Muslim gentleman with henna-dyed red beard who upon hearing we’re American lets out one belly laugh—“HA!” and exclaims, “B'rak! B'rak Mohammad Obama!” Well, yes, yes, ok, sure.

Another garment shop. An amazing old man who is one of (as the store-owner says) four or five people who knows how to operate this handloom before us—a crazy network of strings on a huge wooden frame and what looks like two big ancient horns on pulleys, for separating the string and holding it in place. Thank you, yes, beautiful saris, I have no money today.

When the sun is down, we’re back to the travel agency, really a desk on the side of the road with 6x6’ 3-walled enclosure behind it and posters of buses and city names in Hindi, English and Telugu, all lined up with the other travel agencies and paan shops, a little Indian strip mall in the mud. Next door, a man fries samosas and a chicken is pecking through the trash. The bus coming from Hyderabad today has crashed, so we’re refunded our money with a shrug. Two “shops” down, we buy the same tickets on a different bus line. Can we have our seat numbers? He tells me not to worry, in 10 minutes we will go to the bus pick-up location and he will show us.

45 minutes later, we’re crammed in the back of an autorickshaw with a fellow traveller and his giant bag, following our travel agent and another passenger on his motorcycle (no helmets for either of them, of course). We go far—much farther than we think it should be—and then keep going, and then stop some 15-20 km away by the side of a big road, between a movie theatre and hotel. When it is already too late, our agent reveals that there are no more seats on “this part of the bus” (while pointing to a picture of a bus) but assures us we can sit ‘here”—up front. i.e., the side-ways bench in the driver’s cabin. We protest out the window, but he just smiles and waves goodbye. So we perch there, with the driver, a man sleeping on a cot behind the driver, another man sharing our 5 or 6’ bench, and another man on a fold down seat between the bench and the door. I cross my legs under me and face out front, which is kind of scary—I’ve never been so high up on a road with such a big window, and going so fast. Every swerve feels like the bus will tip, every pass is a near miss that makes me hold my breath. I think about how to best position my legs because what if we crash, then I’ll break my shin bones on the metal bar in front of me. I decide I’d rather have broken shin bones than a broken head-bone.

Bartley tries to sleep, can’t, grabs a blanket and goes to sleep in the aisle. Around 2am, a man offers me his seat and I don’t hesitate, even though I feel a bit bad every time I wake up and he’s sitting up there on that bench. I actually end up sitting beside the Hyderabadi we met in Ellora, who tries to hold a conversation with me at 4am. At some point, someone gets off the bus and Bartley gets a seat in the back. Sometimes the bus stops and we let on people who seem to be hitch-hiking, though I think money was probably exchanged. Wake, sleep, ugh, where am I?

And somehow, we end up in Hyderabad at 7am. And after a shower(my first hot water in over a month!) and breakfast, I am feeling at least 70% human.