Panic, relief and a sense of adventure- I let out a loud sigh and a small chuckle as I eased into an empty seat. My suitcase stowed in the gap between me and the seat in front, and backpack nestled in my lap, I signaled to the ticket collector and bought a bus ticket to Pathankot for the third time that day.

Four hours earlier at Amritsar…

Pathankot is a small district in the north of Punjab, sharing borders with Jammu and Himachal. Oh, and an international border with Pakistan! And the closest you can fly to get there is to Amritsar. Landing at Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport, I took an Uber to the bus stand. A local friend had advised me to board any state transport bus for a hassle-free experience. That’s what I thought the enquiry office at the bus stand directed me to also. Turns out, you may still unwittingly end up boarding a private bus. As I did.

Sights of Punjab

The journey from Amritsar to Pathankot takes about 2 hours. Having missed lunch, I settled in my seat munching on the Lays I bought from the bus stand. First, I checked the aerial shots of Punjab I had clicked on my phone- green plots cut neat and even, with satellite colonies of human settlement. As I kept my eyes peeled for the yellow mustard fields from the sets of DDLJ, I observed the huge terraces of the houses and the charpoys outside, and even a curiously-named school- ‘Struggling Teens Public High School’.

Slowly, the bus trundled along stopping only at Batala on the way. Early February is still winter in Punjab. And I stared helplessly at all the beautiful, fresh winter produce calling out to me from the road-side markets.

Unexpected change of plans

When the bus stopped half an hour later at Gurdaspur, I noticed that everyone but I had deboarded. I thought it wise to ask the driver hanging out near the bus what had happened. He told me coolly, the bus goes only up to this point. “But I had taken the ticket to Pathankot?”, I asked. To no one in particular, it turned out.

I got down and boarded another bus. I had assumed that my Hindi fluency would be good enough to navigate Punjab. I desperately needed that to be true when trying to confirm with the ticket collector that this bus would go all the way to Pathankot. The bus started moving.

It was almost five in the evening and the sun was on its way down. I began to be keenly aware that the only woman on this bus besides me was a wrinkly-faced skinny old lady with a basket of stuff she probably sells. I kept checking Google maps to make sure I knew where I was. Of course, my only option was to keep boarding buses until I got to civilization.

Could it possibly get worse?

Suddenly, the bus picked up speed. The driver began honking like a madman. You must remember, this is a National Highway. It’s not as if he could be bothered by traffic. On peering out front, it looked to me like we were trying to overtake a bus a little ahead of us. This went on for about ten minutes, me holding on to my seat in a speeding, swerving, honking bus with a seemingly maniacal driver. Suddenly, the bus ground to a halt.

Something in Punjabi by the ticket collector and people started getting down. “Oh no, not again!” I thought to myself, “Not in the middle of nowhere!” I asked the driver what had happened and he pointed to the front of the bus. The bus we had been trying to overtake was a bus he had been telling in honk language to take his passengers.

Not wanting to be left behind in a beautiful wheat field with no population in sight, I grabbed my things and raced to the next bus. Clambering into an empty seat next to the wrinkly snack-seller lady, flushed and exhausted, I let out a sigh of relief. And then a chuckle at the comical sight I must have been, flying jackets, luggage in tow.

Making it to Pathankot

I signaled to the ticket collector and took my third, and final, ticket to Pathankot and reached safely by 5.45. pm just before it grew dark. A short walk to Hotel Green, a quick check-in. I had considered stepping out but I decided that it had been enough adventure for a day.

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