How to Make Zombies

The sleeper bus was a big mistake.

It didn’t leave on time. We waited for an hour on the street outside the bus agency, one eye permanently fixed on our bags and another on the comings and goings of random Indians. Who is this guy? Is he taking us to our bus? Where is the bus, anyway? Is there a bus?

Eventually, the right Indian showed up. Our bus driver, he said. So we followed him in Udaipur’s city streets at night, a gaggle of travelers bulked up with travel bags and packs, following the driver down streets and intersections like little ducklings waddling after their mother. Through roundabouts, under dark bridges and overpasses, past cows and strange shapes in the dark.

Indian sleeper buses are a mixture of reclining seats the whole length of the bus, plus glassed off compartments above them where your luggage racks normally would be: the “sleeper” berths. At the very back of the bus, Pascal and I found our double berth and heaved ourselves and various bags into its cramped quarters. It was hot, with flies buzzing aggressively, eager to drink the sweat from your eyeballs.

When we closed the glass partition, the sleeper berth felt like an aquarium, we the fish. Ah, but that was the least of our worries.

As soon as the bus started, I knew we were in trouble. No suspension. The bus could have had rickety wooden wheels and it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. Every little road bump and pebble rattled our cage, and I deeply suspect that the road was last paved prior to WWII. Then bombed.

I immediately started feeling nauseous. Between the constant rattling, the back and forth swaying, and the rapid turns as the driver avoided God knows what calamity, my senses revolted. And I’m not one to normally get queasy. I shouldn’t have had an omelet for dinner. Oh no, don’t think about eggs.

So for the first hour I sat, trying to quell my stomach and praying that I wouldn’t lose it. Maybe that’s why they have the glass partition, I thought. To protect the other passengers.

Eventually, I successfully burped my way out of danger, and lay down to sleep. Hahahaha. Sleep, what a quaint concept.

Lying on my back, some of the jolts were strong enough to launch me into the air and slam me back down, knocking the wind out of me. On my side, using my camera bag as a pillow as I’ve successfully done on all the overnight train journeys (the soft mesh padding on the back is remarkably comfortable), I once landed so hard on it that I heard my neck crack. Free chiropractic adjustment. I put the camera bag away in the cubbyhole above with my other bag and shoes to avoid permanent spinal damage.

Sleep did not come. The rattling. The bumping. The flying up and slamming down. At one point I brushed against Pascal so hard that he now has a welt on his forearm.

Sleep did not come, but the occasional coma did. Or perhaps passing out from the concussionary effects of the ride. Brief moments of non-restful non-wakefulness.

At one point in the night, a hard bounce sent my backpack flying down from the cubbyhole to smash into my face. Bloody hurt. But I was so out of it that I simply groaned and pushed it to the side.

Later, Pascal’s shoe did the same and landed in my face. Right across my cheek and nose. This time I muttered an obscenity before flinging it down further into our miserable rattling cage.

I remember that Pascal, after a particularly hard slam that knocked the wind severely out of our lungs, asked: “are you sleeping?”

Without saying a word, I started laughing. I couldn’t resist. He started laughing. We broke down into hysterical peals of laughter, interrupted only by the rolling and jerking of the bus. The very thought that either of us could somehow sleep through this jackhammer of a ride was simply too absurd. There were tears rolling down my eyes.

At 5am in Jodhpur, they knocked on our aquarium glass to let us know we had arrived. Dizzy, disoriented, bleary-eyed, we made our way, zombie-like, into another city.