Take the Local Bus

A philosophy of good travel

Wholehearted travel means taking the local bus.

The local bus…

I once took it. In India. Heading from Delhi to Agra in a Hawaiin shirt, on my merry way to see the tremendous Taj!

Besides being deprived of tourists, full of locals, awfully slow and with air so thick it goes up your nose like honey, it was an indoctrination, gruelling, spread out over the stuffy and anxiety-inducing expanses of six and a half hours, enlightening me to a wholehearted way of travel.

That testing point of decision will arise!

The express with its plush seats, toilet, and air conditioning, or, the local bus - stiff wooden benches, no toilet and an air quality that makes a dutch oven seem like a meadow at springtime.

Your most shrewd faculties will plead, “Take the express!”, certainly, at least your bowels and bladder will.

But taking the local bus is exactly the reason that you left your home in the first place.

“Take the local bus” means going slow and soaking it all up.

Travel often feels punctuated by select awe-inspiring experiences: the beach with its crystalline blue water and scintillating sand, or that club with “the best lineup ever I swear to god”, all sandwiched between a rigmarole of overnight buses and a sore lower back and another essential - yet entirely reluctant - late night kebab because nothing else was open.

Which misses the picture - the subtleties of a culture are consistently there to be admired.

Stopping at every stop on my way to the Taj was a nightmare. You must understand the scene here.

I had one day, a single, honest trip out of Delhi to visit one of the seven wonders of the world - The Taj Mahal.

At the behest of my own flaws and the incorrect advice of a particular hostel employee, I was directed to the wrong bus. 

The local bus…

I drew into the bus depot in the backseat of a taxi, a megalomania of scrambling people and horn-blaring buses fighting for a sliver of road, the paint peeling off their sides like old wallpaper, unveiling the rusted hues beneath.

Some men surrounded the taxi as we parked - who’s this white guy in the backseat? - chatting to my driver briefly in Hindi before looking back at me and laughing.

Oh great, I’m fucked.

The bus seat was of stiff wood. Yet I snagged a window spot. Ripper. Of note, there were no actual panes of glass. Just an open cut in the wall.

We set off. Stopping at every single stop, I was quickly engulfed by that unparelled bustling centre of New Delhi.

An unrelenting swarm of rickshaw horns stealing any peace from my ears. Ever-invasive eyeballs staring directly at mine and refusing to look away when I caught them. Intoxicating car fumes maligning the air to poisonous honey. My suffocated skin trapped in the waters of its own plight against that unending siege of the mid summer humidity. Those who know, know.

When I asked a young man how long it would take to get to Agra, I nearly had a panic attack.

Six and a half hours.

It would close in seven.

There was no repreive. The hounding outside world bore down on me like a deluge. Every stop salt in the wound. Every new passenger another set of eyes prying into mine. Every second another pool of sweat developing. Every horn echoing and reverberating in my ears.

Deep inhale.

There was something undeniably potent about it, how I can still feel it all today.

I was on a trip to see the Taj, one of the seven wonders of the world, and before even getting there I saw and smelt and drank and ate and cowered from a menagerie of visceral stimuli that I’d never encountered before.

The decrepit bus depot and its senile busses, getting laughed at, getting helped, those horns, those eyes, those smells, my god those smells, all of that unhinged New Delhi bustle that I had a front row seat for, that seat, making me numb after only an hour, the desperation of hitting the countryside and finally observing open fields and a clear sky not covered by mould-green smog, observing the farmers’ rural way of life as I lugged through every single stop, the spices of the highway samosa that was so warm and hearty it let me think of home, and the gelato stand which fortuned a spring of optimism despite its ridiculous price.

Teeming across that entire journey was precisely the thing I was looking for, culture.

You will also find it in the unique chime of a train station in Tokyo, the greeting from a Thai air hostess before you’ve even left your own country, the social suicide of not paying a tip in America.

Or a bus stop.

Every. Single. One of them.

It’s there. It’s always there. To be observed, to be cowered from, and to be admired.

And the people! Oh yes the people….

“Take the local bus” means going the route of the locals.

Because it’s the locals who let you come home with an authentic understanding of the country.

Time spent on the local bus renders you entirely exposed to the chatterboxes, the plebs, the school kids, the farmers, and even the Hare Krishnas.

Somewhere between Delhi and the gelato stand, at a point where I had steeled my nerves and given myself over to the tides of fate, a peculiar glint shone from the side of the road up ahead at the next bus stop.

Peach-orange robes flowing over his body, radiating the sun's light straight through my hole in the wall and into my eyes.

Who on Earth is this magical man?

He saw me, of course he did, like a sore thumb!, and sat down right next me on my keeping-me-honest wooden plank.

He quickly informed me that he was a Hare Krishna, embarking on some willful ramblings in an attempt to enlighten me to the blessings of Hinduism - all despite my destitute lack of Hindi.

So we went back and forth as two people without language must - smiles and hand gestures and single word sentences. Two if you’re lucky.

No enlightenment occurred that day. At least, not to Hinduism. 

But it’s conversations with locals just like him that offer an opportunity to appraise your own life in a fashion rarely, if ever, granted when you only speak with people who share the exact same lifestyle, values and opinions as you. Imagine if I could have had a one hour conversation with a Hare Krishna?

Exploring his own values and customs would have served as fertile ground to scrutinise my own beliefs, testing even my most entrenched ideals and sowing the seed of an idea that might flourish into a beautiful, blossoming manner of living.

And it’s conversations with locals that allow you to hear the authentic truths of a country. Their stories are heartfelt and impactful, emotions and passion on plain show, which altogether has a way of imprinting on you that inscriptions on a Museum wall just can’t.

Can I really implore you to literally take the local bus as I did? Seeking the stray Hare Krishna by the wayside of a highway?

Time, and questions of mental prosperity, may not permit. That’s okay.

The reality is that a multitude of accessible ways present themselves to saddle up with the locals and experience life through their looking glass. The best way is through platforms such as Work Away and WWOOF, Warm Showers and Couch Surfing, all vessels that allow you to live and work with locals. Unencumbered by the red tape of signatures on work contracts, of waiting to hear back from the Government, these platforms are a dive-in-and-get-after-it setup.

Even more accessible is eating where the locals eat. Don’t pull your phone out. For god's sake don’t do it. Just go for a walk, look for a place with the plastic chairs, chock-full of people, have a sniff, and go for it. If you don’t trust me, then trust Barack Obama, who famously ate with Anthony Bourdain at a run-of-the-mill Pho joint in Vietnam and followingly rocketed it to continuing fame.

And one of the most celebrated ways? Solo travel.

When you’re alone, really alone, to that lovely questioning and probing and assaulting that we call internal monologue, you’ll gladly seek conversation with whoever. On the flip-side, people will also seek you out, engaging in fleshed out conversations, sometimes even as you’re walking along the street with your bike, knowing too well themselves the vitriol of an undistracted human.

I once spent a whole evening with three Albanian men, employees at a homestay I was camping at, talking about corrupt governments and how much money I can earn in my country compared to theirs and how to get the hell out of Albania and how delightful yet precarious those women are. It was great. In trademark Albanian style they smoked the entire way through.

It was only when I crept into the chilling night air, to my tent situated lonesome at the base of a mountain, a decrepit bunker just nearby - full of shotgun shells, I might add - and nestling myself into the noisy confines of my sleeping bag, did I realise that the three gentlemen had been looking after me.

Ensuring that I understood the power outage was no issue and would be fixed. Telling me exactly where I could find a good dinner. Providing me with earnest company for the whole cold dark evening that I was alone in the Albanian alps. Even refusing to take my payment for the accommodation, and giving me a free breakfast and lunch the next day. All from those people who earn a measly fraction compared to the people in my country. Thank you gentlemen! 

And I also never gleaned a better insight into the lives and plights of Albanians.

So eat where they eat. Sleep where they sleep. Work where they work. Live like they live. Talk like they hold the secrets to everything.

And most of all, bus where they bus.

Because it ensures you return home with a genuine understanding of the place.

Even if that involves wading out into precarious waters.

"Take the local bus" means throwing yourself into new situations.

Because navigating discomfort is the catalyst for self-improvement and guarantees the creation of unforgettable experiences.

It means going beyond that phrenetic trip advisor orgy of tropical beaches to overpriced and convoluted cocktails to taking that picture at that place to spending god-knows-how-much.

It means unlocking a secret passage in a maze of tourist traps.

Don’t get me wrong, I can’t discount partying and boozing. It’s fun. And fun is righteous. 

But embracing the trials and lessons of the local bus journey yields a more profound and enduring sense of fulfilment.

Trust me.

My trip to the Taj was a drawn, prolonged purgatory, every stop another reminder that I’d stuffed up and the Taj was etching nearer and nearer to closing time.

The Hare Krishna having long departed, the gelato sizzling away in my stomach acids, my bodily fluids on their however-many-teenth cycle of churning themselves, I was ready to see this god damn wonder they call the Taj.

We finally arrived in Agra. I ran off, flailing my arms in the air at the next rickshaw, “Taj Mahal! Please.”

He laughed and said he will take me as close as he can, “but brother, the Taj is already closed.” 

So, on my instagram is a stupid, ridiculous, goofy picture of me in my Hawaiin shirt with a vague, tiny outline of the Taj Mahal 20 Km's behind me. I’m smiling - it’s only partly forced. Even in the moment I knew I’d just had an experience. The exact thing I was hunting for when I left the cushy confines of my home.

It was stifling, demanding, and arduous, nearly sapping the heart from me. But I emerged a better man. And there’s no price you can put on that. 

It’s an adventure which becomes a story, an everlasting memory amidst the vast ocean of life experiences that are inevitably sucked out of your known consciousness at the turning of the tide.

It lies in taking that local bus.

The local bus…

Or driving a Tuk Tuk for miles cross country on rickety roads, boarding a dodgy ferry, buying goods from a local vendor on the street instead of fluorescent tourist traps with attendants who speak perfect English. 

Learning to ride a motorbike on the highest altitude road in the world, camping on the top of a mountain during a lightning storm, going on a date with someone who doesn’t speak your language. 

It means hitchhiking, chatting to the waiter, embracing the Hare Krishna.

It means using platforms like Workaway, WWOOF, CouchSurfing and WarmShowers.

It means accepting whatever may come as a symptom of whole-hearted travel.

Even anxiety inducing bus rides that see you miss one of the seven wonders of the world.

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Where am I writing this from? A local train, from Awa Ikeda station to Gaku station on Shikoku island in Japan, four years after that eventful bus ride. I’m heading to a Workaway farm, toiling in fields like a local for three weeks. It’s pretty remote for Japan— I avoided the Shinkansen, a private car, or a taxi. It took time, overnight buses, but it’s worth it.

I swear it’s not just because I’m a cheap-skate.

I just finished a conversation with a young Japanese lady who was on a two week journey around Southern Japan with her friend. Despite being unable to communicate with speech, we translated using google and showed each other pictures of our travels, smiling and laughing the whole way. Bonus points, I think we were flirting.

She got off and I’m left with what appears to be a whole cohort of school kids chittering and chattering away. It makes me recall catching trains back home, how I would’ve looked amongst my friends talking about whatever teen-year-old garbage was the craze at the time.

We’re travelling through a valley, our train at the base of the mountains on one side, offering a view of lush green farms that sweep across to meet with the mountains on the other side. It’s overcast, but if you’ve been to Japan in Summer, you’ll know that its foliage has a peculiar way of radiating a defiant green regardless. It’s stunning. Some kids have their faces glued to the window - I think they know too.

We are stopping at every stop.

My god this is taking a long time!

Imagine blazing past all this on an express train, missing out on chats with the locals?

A shame.

And I wouldn’t have had enough time to write this damned thing.