one day, on the road to nuwara eliya

Then we set out through the mountains from Kandy to a town even further up called Nuwara Eliya. The thing that drew us to this place was not so much cultural as natural. This town is settled in the middle of the mountainous tea plantations and is a close trek to the Horton Plains National Park, where there is beautiful hiking to be done. We wanted to go hiking to a place called World's End, where one can, reputedly, see all the way to the ocean from the top of the mountain. Cool huh?

We decided to take the bus from Kandy, which is more direct than the train and extremely cheap (about 150 Sri Lankan Rupees - about $1.50 US). Together and separately, we've taken buses all over the damn planet. How bad can it be? Certainly not worse than the chicken bus that we took from Guatemala City to Antigua. The only saving grace of that trip was that there were a couple of nuns on board and we figured that would at least protect us a little bit.

We boarded our “bus” at about 11:30. It was more like a long van, actually. And there was no place to store baggage, so we had to take our little suitcases to the back seat with us. I could fit mine on the floor in front of me because, even pregnant, I can still curl up into a surprisingly small ball and stay that way for hours without moving. I'm going to do well in Japan. Chris, however, as big as he already is, had no choice but to sit on top of his, making him a full two feet taller than anybody else in sight. At least he had room for his legs in the aisle.

Until somebody else got on and sat in the drop-down jump seat in front of him.

By the time we were loaded, we were pinned and totally immovable in the back seat. I was cozy in my little den by the window, though I'd be the first to die in any kind of accident. And my window was already smashed, so I couldn't see anything. But hell, for $1.50 and three hours, we can do anything.

As we started up the mountain road, we realized exactly how bad the switchbacks were. Chris was getting a real workout trying to hold on and not topple onto the poor nice Sri Lankan man next to him. It was sad, but funny. And then? Then the air conditioner duct started to drip water on Chris' head. He and the nice Sri Lankan man next to him tried to stop it up with tissue and a plastic bag, to no avail. It was dumping cold water all over him, as he sat on his suitcase, holding on to the window bar for dear life.

Then, predictably, the bus breaks down. The driver tried to pop start it again by rolling backward down the mountain, which was a slightly hairy proposition, in my opinion.

So of course you know what happens next, right? Of course! The bus catches on fire. What else could possibly have happened? Acrid smoke is billowing back into the bus and people, ALL of whom are closer to the only door than we are, are running off in a panic. The fire is, also predictably, right by said door. We manage to hold our breathes long enough to clamor out of the burning bus and prop ourselves on our suitcases in the dirt next to the road. The driver is now attempting to put out the electrical fire by pouring water all over the mechanical components of the engine. Lovely. We are NOT getting back on this particular bus.

We're pretty much at a loss regarding what to do next when another, bigger bus pulls up and stops. While it is already filled to capacity with it's own passengers, people from our bus get their money back and then climb aboard. We do the same. Hell, when in Rome. We are the last people on the new bus because we are big and slow. This turns out to be a good thing though, because there is no room for us and I get to sit in the front with the driver. Chris is now sitting on his suitcase again, upended this time, in the middle of the front of the aisle. All in all, life is good. We're on our way again and I've got the best seat in the house. The breeze is blowing and I'm sure you can guess what's on TV. The entire bus is cruising along, watching WWF Smackdown. Life could not be better.

This is a nice end to our travel story, thinks I to myself, and I apologize in advance if any of this story has made you laugh because nothing seemed funny anymore after what happened next.

We were taking the blind turns carefully and I was impressed with how serene and calm the driver was. If we were in India on these switchbacks I would have had my face buried in my lap. A little blue Honda came around a curve in front of us, with plenty of sight time and plenty of space. We were in the middle of the road, but one always is on these roads. The car had plenty of time. It really did. But I saw it about to happen just as the driver did. He tried to pull to the left, but the little car just rammed the right side of the cab and there was that sound - that split-second crush of metal that is irrevocable and potentially life changing. Or life ending.

The bus was OK, but the car was so much smaller. It veered away from the bus and just went sailing over the side of the mountain. I didn't know at first how far it might be, but it was hundreds of feet down and the car landed right on its nose. There's no way anybody survived.

In the US, we're trained to stop and stay still in a case like this. Stay where you are until somebody tells you to file out in an organized fashion. The elderly, children, and pregnant women first - able-bodied men last. No such thing. All of the men ran right overtop of me and rushed out, helter skelter, into the road. I like to think that it was an impulse to help, but they just wanted to gawk at the carnage. It was a stampede and we barely made it out of the bus intact.

Then we set us shop again on our suitcases on the side of the road to wait and see what happened. The police came, the ambulance came, though the ambulance men just stood around joking with the bystanders. I chalk part of that up to Buddhism and part of it up to the fact that there was obviously nothing they could do anyway. Everybody in that car was clearly already dead and the wreck couldn't be reached without equipment of some sort. So I don't blame them, though it was sort of unnerving to sit there and watch everybody gossiping and laughing and goofing off. It reminded me of the strange feeling I got after the tsunami, when all of Chennai just went right on joking and laughing and playing around.

The police talked to the driver and haphazardly measured some stuff with an old dressmakers tape and then people just sort of started to disperse. I don't even know where a lot of them went. It soon became clear that people were moving on toward Nuwara Eliya, by hook or by crook, and we stood up to try to figure out what to do. At this point, cost is of no issue to me. I just want to get where I'm going in one piece.

Just then, a little man walked up to Chris and asked if we needed help. He had his “vehicle” right down the street. Being so harassed at every turn by every sort of creature, we have both become rather brusque in shoving people aside if they try to talk to us. However, in this case, there was no alternative. Chris was very polite and admitted that we did, indeed, need help, and asked him how much he wanted. The little guy looked sort of confused and shrugged his shoulders and said “anything”. That alone was sort of weird.

He marched us over to where we expected his rickshaw to be. Instead, he threw our stuff into the back of a truck loaded with coconuts and started to clear out the passenger seat of the cab. Turns out that he's not a rickshaw driver about to charge us $100 to rescue us from sunstroke on the mountainside, but a farmer hauling his coconuts from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya who happened to see a bad accident and find two stranded white folks standing on the side of the road looking sad. He then proceeded to haul his coconuts and us through the mountains for another three hours. The road just kept getting worse and worse and Chris and I couldn't believe that either of our doomed buses were going to attempt to make this drive.

In broken English, our savior told us all about the vegetable farming on the mountain and pointed out the different crops as we passed them. Though he barely spoke English, he knew the correct word for every fruit and vegetable, including “leek”. I didn't even really know what a leek is. I do now . . .

He took us all the way to town and even dropped us off at our hotel door.

So in once short afternoon, I had the beginnings of a funny bus story for the website, death slapped me in the face and forced me to contemplate mortality, and my faith in humanity was restored by a small Sri Lankan farmer with a coconut truck.

And did I mention that I'm pregnant?

Life IS an adventure.

The whole thing would be very amusing if those poor people in that little blue Honda had just been able to stay on the road and keep from going over the side . . .

Our hero, Thusira Gennakoo: