Reflection on buses and normality: Gonggar
Throughout our time in Nepal, we travelled on a variety local buses. By the end, one of the most important lessons learned was to be prepared for the unexpected. Sometimes, even when you go early to book seats in advance, you have to be okay with sharing. Aging, overloaded buses, traversing the foothills of the Himalayas, break down; narrow roads cause long back ups while accidents and malfunctions are resolved. Other times, buses just don’t show up.
Waiting for a connecting bus in Gonggar, a steadily growing crowd of hopeful passengers milled around the entrance of a hotel fronting onto the road. With the limited reliability of transport infrastructure, informal communicative channels or what Julia Elyachar (2010) calls ‘social infrastructures’ can come in handy. As we waited there was an undercurrent of phone calls and hushed conversations as people worked their networks, producing contradicting rumours of a bus on its way, or a bus turned back for the night.
After hours of waiting, with the sky now pitch black and rain threatening, two young men from Lamabagar—who we had been chatting up for information—made a decisive move. Because they were expected to show up for work at the hydro project the following morning, they set off walking to Lamabagar, armed with the light of their phones and a lifetime of familiarity with area. At that point we decided to claim the last available room in the hotel. This room turned out to also belong to a friendly, over-worked young member of the staff who was kind enough to accommodate and find other sleeping arrangements in the packed hotel. Bus travel challenged our situated understandings of “normality” and expectations for transportation infrastructures. It also gave us a greater appreciation of the alternative resources utilized and accommodations made to adapt and adjust in these contexts.