Purgatorial Bus Trip-a-go-go

On July 10th, I experienced the dark nadir of Chinese vehicular culture… but we’ll get to that in a second. That morning, we had piled onto the tour bus for our longest trek yet: a voyage into Kangding – a regional hub within the desolate, sparsely populated area of western Sichuan near the Tibetan border. Knowing that the highways could be treacherous and that delays were likely, the tour guide had previously instructed us to bring snacks for the road, just in case we were in transit longer than expected… This turned out to be unexpectedly sage advice.

Initially, the trip went fairly well. We made good time on the highway, travelling northwest through a variety of gorgeous mountain scenery and ever-decreasing signs of human habitation, and, by 3:30pm, we were informed that it was only another forty or fifty kilometers to our destination. Though we’d already been driving for around six and a half hours (minus pit-stops and lunch), spirits were high and the bus was humming with excited conversation. And then, everything fell apart.

At around four o’clock, the bus coasted towards the entrance to an enormous tunnel, where we encountered the tail-end of a seemingly interminable line of unmoving vehicles stretching forward into the darkness. Time passed… first minutes, then hours. In all, we sat in that spot, without any explanation or hope of reprieve, for more than two hours. In addition to the psychological difficulty of being powerless and uncertain, there was also the physical discomfort of being unable to exit the bus because we were a) on an elevated highway and b) unsure about when we’d need to get moving again. Though there were cheers when our bus started up again, our excitement was short-lived. Once we cleared the tunnel, the cause of the delay became obvious: the highway on the other side had been buried in a landslide, which had necessitated the construction of a new (and as-yet incomplete) roadway. Since the old highway was gone and the new one wasn’t yet built, our bus (and every other stranded vehicle) had to navigate a pitted earthen track several kilometers in length, bucking and wheezing as they shuddered up and down the gravel mounds that passed for a road. Suffice it to say that I’m glad I managed to sidestep my family’s genetic predisposition for motion sickness, because this portion of the trip would have made me feel *very* unwell.

Anyway, our troubles continued once we cleared the worst of the construction, because we then (once again) were plunged back into bumper-to-bumper traffic. After crawling along for several hours, during which time the sun conveniently set, the roadway finally achieved total gridlock. Essentially, Chinese driving practices were to blame: the narrow two-lane highway was simply not up to the task of accommodating three lanes worth of traffic attempting to travel in either direction. At one point, our bus (which was in the right-hand lane travelling west) came up against with two buses and a car that were all driving eastward (and filling up the entire roadway in the process). Sitting in the back seat of the bus, Arturo and I mentally played Tetris with the cars, trying to figure out what needed to move in order to allow traffic to resume flowing.

In the end, after several more hours of waiting, our tour guide and several of the participants took matters into their own hands, getting out of the bus and brow-beating people into reversing along the road or pulling into the shoulder. Once they carved out a path, they then walked ahead of the bus, blocking traffic with their bodies and directing the other drivers to either side of us. It was a dicey gambit (especially considering that it was pitch black outside), but it worked. At 11pm, after more than fifteen hours on the highway, we finally made it to our hotel. I can only hope that someone bought the bus driver a beer… he deserved it.

In spite of the fatigue and irritation, I actually kind of enjoyed this day, oddly enough. It’s like my mood was buoyed by trying to keep everyone else’s spirits up. In addition to having some nice conversations with various folks, I also helped to organize an impromptu singalong, and participated in games of Twenty Questions and Mafia (a variant of Werewolf). It was a peculiar sort of bonding experience for the group.