All Aboard the College Bus

Our time in Mumbai was fleeting. After one blissfully restful night at the hotel, we regrouped in the lobby and enjoyed our first sit-down Indian breakfast at the cafeteria-style buffet. Before I go further, allow me to make a confession: I don’t love Indian food. Or at least, the culinary exploration aspect of this trip was not one of the factors that drove me to apply. Back home, I never crave or suggest Indian when a bunch of friends are trying to decide what kind of takeout to order, and I certainly never attempt to make it myself. I don’t know the basic ingredients of a chutney or a curry, and I can’t really handle anything spicier than medium salsa, heatwise. I’m also easily confused by novel arrangements of familiar ingredients (is this thin sauce supposed to be ladled over the rice? Eaten as soup? Dipped with a piece of naan? Which of these colorful condiments is sweet and which is made of secret Ghost peppers waiting to annihilate my oropharyngeal cavity?). The prospect of embarrassing missteps and catastrophic spiciness miscalculations run high here. One might say that I am ill-equipped, at best, to consume nothing but Indian food day in and day out for a month.

basically me

Other hotel guests were also availing themselves of the buffet, including an Indian boy who looked to be about 8 or 9 years old. Figuring that my level of sophistication in appreciating Indian cuisine may be on par with that of a picky child, I slipped in line behind him and formed a plan: I would watch as he piled the various flatbreads, grains, and sauces onto his plate, then imitate his selection. This quickly proved impractical as the boy selected nothing but one inscrutable fried fritter after another, and I was forced to make choices at random. Luckily, everything we tried turned out to be delicious, and after sampling a dosa (a thin, crepelike pancake wrapped around a veggie filing), rice pudding, various pastries, rice and sauces, and a variety of other dishes I had no names for, we headed back to the Mumbai airport for the noon flight to Mangalore.

Pictured: Cody, and foods of unknown classification

The highlight of the day came a few hours later, after we had touched down in Mangalore and began the final leg of our journey: a 2-hour bus ride to Manipal. We made our way out of the airport and were ushered down the sidewalk by an Indian man who seemed to recognize our group and told us to “go to college bus.”

“Pardon?” someone said, as we took a turn and laid eyes upon the single greatest mode of conveyance I have ever seen before or since.

COLLEGE BUS

Needless to say, I would like to ride on College Bus for the rest of my life, to every destination.

Snack time on College Bus

College Bus may or may not have required new shocks, jostling us merrily over the winding, bumpy roads. We passed farms and semi-abandoned commerce areas; by the sides of the road, stray dogs and bulls lolled lazily in the sun or picked at the grasses growing in the dusty red soil. Just as the taxi driver had done in Mumbai, the College Bus driver honked freely whenever we approached or passed another car, and producing an especially prolonged beep as we rounded sharp curves. Visibility can be limited on these rural roads, and in city and country alike there are often no stop signs, traffic lights, or lane markings to provide order to the flow of cars, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, bicycles, and pedestrians that all flood the thoroughfare en masse. Rather than demonstrating frustration or anger, the frequent, unemotional beeping is akin to a heads-up; other motorists and walkers hear the horn and know a car is approaching on the right, or is intending to pass, or is about to emerge from the blind spot of a curve ahead. Amazingly, I have not witnessed any traffic accidents so far, but I worry that this may only be a matter of time.

By late afternoon the scenery had morphed from country to city, and Elissa informed us that we were now – finally –  in Manipal, home to the Manipal University School of Nursing, which would be hosting us for the month. 

One of the many stray dogs lazing about campus, unconcerned with the threat of oncoming traffic. At top right, a rickshaw.

We hadn’t been given much information about our accommodations except that they would be dormitory-style and close to campus. As we pulled up in front of the International Girls Hostel – B Block, we took in the imposing façade of our temporary home. “Wow,” someone said. “It’s… big.”

Andrea and Katie in front of International Girls Hostel - B Block

The dorm, we would come to learn, has a fairly strict set of rules for students – or as our informational packet referred to us, “inmates.” We giggled over the Do’s and Don’ts list, which instructed us not to keep or feed any pets in our rooms, not to conduct or attend parties, not to return later than 11pm curfew, not to consume any alcohol or other substances, not to keep or play televisions, not to go to any beach, not to loiter anywhere inside or outside the building, not to permit “proxy/dummy roommates in your room” (???), and not to light lamps, candles, or crackers indoors. “Take care,” the notice concluded. “Your life is precious. We value it.”

They value our lives so much that they give us allllmost 4 full pails of firefighting sand

I think I have found the problem with this student's swimming technique

Anxious to unpack for the first time in three days, we accepted our room assignments and keys from the dorm warden and began arranging our spaces. Besides being dingy and distinctly institutionalized in feel, the dorm rooms are very passable even by American university standards: air conditioning, ample storage, full private bathrooms with showers, an extra utility sink in the entry, and a standard-issue prison mattress with one pillow, a thin cotton coverlet, and about as much give as a slab of granite. Two buckets, one large and one small, had been placed next to the toilet in each bathroom – a subtle reminder that lavatories in India typically don’t provide toilet paper. Instead, spray nozzles mounted near the toilet serve as handheld bidets, or, as in the case of our rooms, a large bucket is placed near the toilet and filled with water from a spigot, while the smaller bucket is used as a scoop. Although I am eager to experience many of the cultural differences of this month abroad, bucket-bidets will not be among them.

Join me on a brief tour of Rachel's room:

Our last excursion of the night was to Dollops, a local restaurant in Manipal that Elissa promised would be simultaneously delicious, cheap, and authentic, and which had been a frequent haunt for the group last year. The menu, like most that I’ve seen here, list the names of dishes without any explanation, leaving even the more well-versed Indian food connoisseurs among us to wonder at the identity of many of the meals on offer. We selected a few familiar plates – palak paneer (usually saag or spinach paneer in the States), chicken tandoori, mushroom masala, naan, and rice – and jabbed blindly at a few others to share family-style. Our ignorance was rewarded with a smorgasbord of stews and gravies that fed the eight of us for a total cost of less than $2 per person, including tip.

From 11 o'clock clockwise: eggplant mush, chickpea mush, chicken mush, paneer mush, naan, spinach mush

And then, clutching the toilet paper we’d promptly purchased from a nearby convenience store, we trudged back to our new dorm and promptly fell into a carb-induced coma. Our next day, slated for campus orientation and a shopping trip to buy more traditional Indian clothing, promised to be a long one. Take care, the rock-hard mattress on the twin bed seemed to mock as I flopped onto it and let out an involuntary yelp of pain. Your life is precious. We value it.