We'll be the first to admit that folks in the travel world do tend to fall on the quirky side, but even we have to recognize when we encounter the insane. Which is what we thought when we heard from our contributing editor (and recent Lowell Thomas Award Winner) Carl Hoffman, who recently emailed us about his current project: traveling by self-imposed lunatic express. "I'm traveling around the world on the world's slowest, most crowded and most dangerous buses, boats, trains and planes for a book to be published next year," he writes. The key, you see, is that there's little that's actually "express" about his trip, and there's little that's safe either.
On a recent leg of the journey, Carl spent five days on a ferry from Jakarta to Sarong, where he and his cohorts (seen in the video, above) spent most of the night sleeping in the "ekonomi," otherwise known as steerage. A glimpse of exactly what that's like after the jump.
Luckily, roaches weren't the only creatures he encountered, as Carl caught sight of whales, porpoises, and flying fish from the deck of the ship. But after that was done, he followed that with rush-hour train ride in Mumbai.I have never seen such crowds. The decks outside, the decks inside, the passageways, the stairways - every square inch of floor was covered with humanity. There must have been at least another thousand on board. To descend the stairs into steerage was to get hit with a wall of heat and humidity and cigarette smoke. You could touch it, feel it on your face and hands. It almost knocked me backwards; made me want to flee. Massed human beings in tight quarters are not a pretty sight. They sweat, cough and hack. They snore and belch. They produce untold quantities of garbage and trash, from cigarette butts to egg shells to fish tails, which can't go anywhere, can't be hidden.
What is the standard roach calculation? For every one you see, there are 1,000 you don't. Or is it for every one you see, there are 10,000 you don't? No matter. For most of us, one or two roaches in sight when you flip on your kitchen light heralds an infestation. On the Bukit Siguntang there must have been a billion roaches. Literally. The decks, the bulkheads, the ceilings, the toilets (such as they were) swarmed day and night. Lying on my hard plank I watched them crisscross the ceiling overhead, waiting for one to lose its grip and fall, which they did. Roaches are surprisingly soft, almost silky feeling to the touch.
As the train slows toward a stop there's sudden violence. Men, women, old ladies, children, beggars - smiling, placid, and quiet one moment - burst out of the train, hands pushing on backs, elbows pointed and flailing, and a new wave pulses in. It's 15 seconds of intensity and insanity, followed by the quietude of the crowd that only exists in India. One person per square foot, and less. Hands, feet, arms, chins and cheeks touching you. When you get to the station you hold on, tight, so you don't get swept out by the human riptide.
Position is everything. If you're in the doorway, the last man, it's as good as traveling gets - no door, no railing, a hot wind, the smell of curry and sh*t and smoke and rotting vegetables and dust poking every one of your senses, the teeming richness of a place so complex and deep it's as hard to grasp in your hand as air. But if you get pushed inside, if you make a tactical error - miss a hand grip, say, or don't push back when someone tries to usurp your airy space - than it's all just heat and human bodies against you.
And people here do it every day, twice a day, sometimes six hours a day.
And
to think that D.C.'s Metro has carpeting and is dead quiet at nearly
all hours of the day (which I actually think is quite odd, to be
honest.) No complaining about the commute home tonight.
You can follow along with Carl on his blog, or check in on him via Twitter. We wish him safe travels.
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