Our hotel in Pushkar said there weren’t any tourist buses going to Bundi from Pushkar, and that the local option, involving a transfer in nearby Ajmer, would take something like nine hours. They offered to arrange a private car to take us, which would cost 1700 Rupees. That’s like $40, which is ridiculous. “If you book now, we can get you a nice car. If you wait, you might not get a nice car.” We decided to take our chances on the bus.

Setting out at 8:30am, we were on a bus to Ajmer by 9:00am (cost per person: 6 Rupees), and in Ajmer by 9:30am. At the Ajmer bus station we inquired about the bus to Bundi, and soon had two tickets for the 9:45am bus (cost per person: 90 Rupees).

When I asked the guy at the ticket counter how long the bus would take, he said it would be four hours. That’s what it said in the Lonely Planet, and made sense: Bundi’s only something like 160km from Pushkar. It’s amazing the things people will tell you sometimes. And of course the total cost of local bus tickets for two was less than what he told me it would be for one person. Whenever they say, “Better you book now,” it really means, “Don’t trust me as far as you can throw me.”

Our New Friend

Once we got settled on to the bus heading for Bundi, everything was great. Our backpacks fit in the overheard racks, so we didn’t have to worry about them getting stolen off the top of the bus. After about an hour the little girl sitting next to me got off the bus and was replaced by an Indian man in his 30s. He didn’t say anything to us, but seemed really curious about everything we were doing. Not surprised, we just sort of laughed about it a few times, but didn’t let it bother us.

Eventually he worked up the courage to try to communicate with us, but unfortunately for all of us he didn’t know very much English. He started with his name, getting ours, and then our nationality. After that he was pretty much at a loss for a while, but it was obvious that he was thinking really, really hard. He obviously wanted to talk to us, so it was impossible not to like the guy. Lots of people are curious about us, that’s what makes people stop what they’re doing, or stand right in front of us, or slow down their car/bus/truck/rickshaw to stare at us. Few people actually try to communicate.

Over the next few hours he kind of told us where he was from, established that we were heading to Bundi, that it had a very beautiful palace, and that we really liked Rajasthan so far. He had me write down our names and email address on a little piece of paper for him. At a quick stop in some town on the way he hopped off the bus and came back with a folded up newspaper square full of grapes. After eating a few he excitedly offered us some. It killed us to turn him down, but there was just too much risk involved. I tried to pantomime that they would give me a bad stomach, but I’ll never know if it got across. A little while later he pointed to the small bundle of grapes wrapped up in a Hindi newspaper on his lap and asked if we didn’t like fruit. I again pantomimed a bad stomach. I’m pretty sure he bought the grapes mainly to to offer them to us, to keep the interaction going. Sadly it’s just not worth hours of agony in the bathroom to make a guy sitting next to you on the bus happy.

As we neared Bundi we got a picture with him, which he obviously enjoyed. Val read on a blog she stumbled across that lots of people in Bundi wanted you to take pictures with them, but they never wanted it emailed to them or anything. Just seeing it flash up on the LCD for a few seconds was enough. Our new friend was much the same way.

When we started pulling into Bundi he pointed out the palace and the rectangular lake nearby. Before actually pulling up to the bus stand, though, the bus stopped and turned around. It wasn’t obvious whether or not this was the end of the line for us, but vehicles on the road in front of us were moving at a standstill, and it sounded like there was a parade or something going on. Between our new friend a few other guys on the bus they told us to get off, then go down the road and turn left in order to get into town. We shook hands with him as we got off the bus, his face split in two with a grin.

As for us, we had to walk through a massive parade with all of our stuff, not entirely sure where we were going. The parade would stop as young men fought with long sticks, a marching band nearby playing loudly. People were piled into the backs of large trucks, slowly moving down the streets. As we walked down the length of the parade, we felt like we were more interesting to the people hanging out on the trucks than the parade itself. Getting around India is always exciting, but seldom for the same reason twice.