27 Nov 2009 I miss the mountains, even before we have left; the jagged, snowy peaks, the slanted eyes and youthful skin, the dog gangs making a ruckus at midnight every night (ok, maybe I don't miss this, but it is quite a strange occurence- during the day, the stray dogs mosey and lay about and don't do much of anything but at late hours, all you can hear is barking and howling and what I could only imagine as street battles).
After climbing up to the roof and securing our backpacks, we board the simple bus that will take us 5 hours to Pathankot and it begins off down, down the mountains and the grey and white peaks turn subtler and gentler and greener as we descend these windy, tiny streets, the bus filling up with locals in the seats and aisles.
I drift off to sleep but awake to hear, in a split-second, a crash of windows shattering, a woman's scream, and a million tiny clear pieces fall on top of me, and my instinct ducks myself under my arms as I get covered. We see that the outside ledge of the bus caught onto a branch, causing the row of top windows to immediately and simultaneously shatter and as everyone looks around a bit confused, but making sure everyone else is ok, we wait to see what happens next: the bus keeps on for a few minutes until we get into a small town, where it stops for 5 minutes, the bus driver not saying a word to anyone, everyone brushes off the bits of glass from their bags and sweaters and seats and that's that; we continue on for the remaining 3.5 hours, with scattered and shattered glass rolling all around.
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