Travel Day: Roorkee to Mussoorie

Got up early to get to breakfast at 8 on the dot, though it turns out they aren’t actually read when they say they are. So I went to get my book and read it, and at 8:20, they were ready with some toast. I had 6 pieces, with lots of jelly. I kind of regretted this later, but I was hungry at the time.

I checked out of the hostel, finished the last minute packing, gave the room a thrice-over, and then went to wait for the cycle rickshaw they said they ordered me. I waited about 20 minutes before they noticed me and said it should be there by now. One guy went out on his scooter to find me one. I told him I was going to the train station because I wanted to try to meet Jenny’s train at 10:38, and I knew there were some seats left, or at least there were last night at midnight. But I heard him telling the rickshaw guy to take me to the bus stand! I corrected him again, but he just nodded. I said “train station!” and they asked “railway station?” really doubtfully, but I assure them that I really meant the railway station. So finally, I got on the rickshaw, and the guy asked me “Bus stand?” and I said “No, railway station.” “Train station?” he asked. Yes! What is so difficult to understand about this? Maybe it was really far away or something. Because after agreeing to take me to the train station, he took me to the bus stand, then tried to obscenely overcharge me. I feel particularly guilty about cycle rickshaws because it’s so much physical work on their part, but I was dumbfounded by this whole transaction. But there was a bus for Dehradun, so I got on it. And now I know why the other bus was called “Deluxe.” This one was a series of benches made for people whose femurs are no longer than 1 foot, apparently. And when it rained (which it definitely did), huge blasts of water came in through a loose window and drenched me. Just me. Just me and my travel luck. But I did arrive at the bus station, where it was flooding, alive, and only sopping wet with filthy water. So, that was a blessing. Or something.

It took me a while to find a rickshaw, but I eventually did, and he seemed pretty nice. I told him to take me to the train station, (“railway station?” “yes”; I just put these conversations in here because I KNOW these guys understood what I said, they’re just pushing their own agenda somehow). He took me to a taxi stand. I think it was because I had mentioned I was going to Mussoorie, and there are no trains to Mussoorie. But I explained I was meeting a friend, and he took me to the station. I sat for a while reading, until a guy next to me asked if I was reading a book about yoga (he must have read over my shoulder because I’m reading the part of Eat Pray Love that takes place in an ashram). We talked a bit, but I was glad when Jenny’s train finally arrived an hour after I got the station. I found our driver, and then spotted Jenny in the crowd.

Our driver drove crazy, which was kind of scary on those mountain passes, and we both got a little car sick. But it was better than the bus ride last time. We got to our rooms, which are swank, then we went straight to lunch. Which was delicious, I thought. I napped in the afternoon because I was so tired from sleeping poorly and being so nervous all day about traveling, and then gorging myself at lunch because I was so hungry from my early breakfast of a mountain of toast. I will be glad not to have the Roorkee hostel food again. It really was awful. Except the sliver of strawberry ice cream they gave me once at lunch.

There’s even internet in our rooms, and the sink doesn’t drain by dripping all the way across the bathroom floor (full of your toothpaste spit or whatever) to a drain in the floor. It has a little trough that it goes through to get to the shower drain. And they have toilet paper and trash cans and a towel. Like I said, swank.

Jenny didn’t want to come to dinner (she’s also very tired), so I went alone and sat in the middle of a bunch of elderly gentlemen. It was only slightly awkward. They were nice enough to my presence, but we didn’t talk about much. I thought dinner was good, but they didn’t have the delicious butter naan that they’d had at lunch.

I came back, wrote a few emails, both personal and official, made a few Skype calls home, and then went to sleep to have strange dreams. I think I have strange dreams all the time in India because I’m always in a new place, and people have strange dreams in hotels and new places.