Delhi, Again

Day 418
I got to Delhi early and went right to a place where I could book a ticket for a night bus to McLeod Ganj. I only had 10 hours before my bus so I decided to no get a hotel for the night.

I went to a restaurant for some food and sat there for a while writing in my journal. When the bookstore across the street opened I went and bought both Chinese and Mongolian guidebooks. I really needed to do some planning for the next few countries.

I then went to a tea shop and worked on a my itinerary for some time before grabbing some more food and heading to the office for the bus.

They told me to wait for quite some time and by the time that they put me into a cyclo I really thought that I would be late. They had also made a point that I should not pay the cyclo driver as they had already. On the way the driver stopped and chatted with his friends for a bit. I was about to lose it. When we got to the place that the bus would come to he asked for a tip. I about flipped out on him.

When the bus came they charged us all extra to put our luggage in the trunk. This really shouldn't happen when you take a private bus and it really irritated a lot of the westerners including me. I didn't like the way the things were being handled and I decided to stand outside and wait until they had shut the door. This irritated one the guy who was meant to get everyone in their seats. He was actually yelling at me and telling me that this was just the Indian way. I I tried to explain that it had nothing to do with India but that I always watched until things were locked. He told me that he would leave it unlocked and opened for the entire trip.

I wasn't the only person who was uncomfortable and watching, I was just the one he picked on. I had been chatting with an American couple before the bus had arrived and the male counter part was watching as well. I went ahead and got on the bus.

The nasty man then told me to sit in the seat that was next to his girlfriend, it took some convincing for me to get another seat. He wasn't actually letting any of us sit in the seats we were assigned. I complained that I had reserved a window seat and he made another person move, telling him that he was in the wrong seat. He didn't want to move but did in the end.

Then an Israili couple sitting in the back got upset that their seats didn't recline and that they were not the seats that they had booked. This prompted the guy next to me to get angry. He didn't speak English well though and they told him that if he was angry that he could get off of the bus. Eventually he just sat down.

Then two of the bus company employees took two of the reclining seats. This really irritated the Israli couple who stood next to them until they got up. When I looked around I could see that they had given the westerners the bad and broken seats (mine was broken) and the locals had the nice seats. Luckily I was tired and put my ipod on and just fell asleep.