You might have been wondering how the daily life of a traveller looks like? Though we would love it to be so, it is not all about admiring amazing landscapes, eating delicious food, lying on the beach and gaping before ancient monuments — it also involves sleeping in creepy places, sweating in the heat of the merciless sun and being shaken for hours on bumpy bus rides. About the last, I want to tell you a bit more, for we often spend fairly long hours in those buses. After all, they are the cheapest and most common option to get from one place to another. I do not know how many times we already made our way to the bus station, had to ask at least five locals which one was our vehicle and if it really went where we wanted to go, then waited for the bus to come, holding our backpacks before storing them in the luggage rack — only keeping our valuables, the guitar and a pullover (for the air-con) with us — and, finally, got into the bus. During those journeys, I always learn a lot about the country, how its system works (or does not work) and how its people behave. Let me take you on rides through different nations we have visited!

As we always opt for the cheapest deal, we generally end up in the bus being the only travellers amongst all the locals. Not that we would have had a choice back in Botswana, during the first month of our trip, for there are no bus companies selling tickets to you, and therefore, you are not granted the luxury of choosing between different options. In Gabarone, we simply went to the central bus station, a very crowded and noisy area downtown, and asked where was the bus for our next destination. There are neither signs nor timetables which would facilitate your way through the mayhem of the station. The locals point at a bus and the latter leaves when it is full. Full? I should rather say overcrowded. The most impressive fact about bus rides in Botswana was that the driver seemed to always be able to find space for more people. If all the seats were taken, people would stand in the corridor, children would climb on the lap of people they do not know (I once had a little girl sitting on my legs for about two hours) and if it really came down to it, men would sit on the stairs of the bus. It is a constant coming and going, since the bus stops all the time, at every small village: it is the only transport passing through for the whole day. So, the bus is crowded to bursting; but miraculously, you would not notice there are so many people in such a small space: everybody is quiet and patient, looking out of the window or sleeping, though certainly never shouting at each other — not even the babies would cry. Except for the driver. The driver talks on his phone while holding the wheel with his other hand or loudly sings along with the music booming out of his radio. That is, of course, only when he is not eating or drinking his coke at the same time. I often imagined a Swiss policeman fainting straight away if he saw a bus breaking so many road rules at the same time. Take a look at the picture beyond: you will see the state of the windscreen and what kind of obstacles the driver had to deal with.

In Asia, bus journeys have nothing of the African chaos. Even though the speed indicators seldom work, at least the windscreens are in one piece, not to mention that all the passengers actually have their own seat! Usually, you can book your ticket at your hostel or directly at the bus terminal, meaning you even know when your bus is supposed to leave; which is probably not the actual departure time, mind you! As the journeys pass off uneventfully, you get to enjoy the countryside unfolding behind the windows — except when you have to change bus without having been informed about that prior to the ride. In Cambodia, this even occurred twice to us on the same trip. You find yourself on the pavement, stranded with your luggage, in a village of which you do not even know the name, waiting for your “connection” without a clue about whether and when it will come. But in the end, it always worked out and we got to our final destinations.

In Myanmar, however, night buses (our favourite choice for it saves us the cost of a night at the hostel) became a bit bizarre. Apart from the fact that you arrive at four o’clock in the morning at your destination — even though you were told you would get there by six a.m. — which makes searching a hostel quite an adventure, you do not enjoy a lot of sleep during the trip anyway: not only is the driver honking at every vehicle he takes over and the seats insist on imprinting the precise relief of the bumpy road on your sore bottoms, but you are also forced to listen to Burmese karaoke (mainly cheesy love songs) on full blast. Every now and then a Burmese, with an awfully disgusting noise, spits his red saliva (given by the betel leaf he is chewing) into a dustbin. Moreover, the lights are turned on every time the bus stops — why not, after all, we are not supposed to be sleeping on a sleeper bus, are we?

So you might understand that it came as a bit of a shock when we took our first bus in Malaysia (sleeper also). Once more, we packed our backpacks, had a quick dinner at a street stall and set off by the skytrain to Kuala Lumpur’s main bus terminal. Nothing had prepared us for what we would experience this night: the half-empty double-decker bus only had three seats in a row — not four like in standard buses — hence the chairs were wider and we enjoyed more leg space as well. The few people that were aboard had the same idea of a night bus as us: keeping calm, reclining the seat, drawing the blanket up to your nose and dozing off for a few relaxing hours. The tarred highway was softer than silk, no television nor radio was annoying our ears and incredibly the bus, which was supposed to leave at 9.30 p.m., actually left at 9.31 — almost as punctual as the Swiss trains! And — O miracle — the light blessedly went off for the rest of the night, which meant that we actually got some lovely hours of sleep…

In short, every bus journey is a small adventure. And you never know what surprises are awaiting you for the next ride. You might have to withstand a horrible night and afterwards, a week later in the same country, catch a bus in which the air-con and the lever reclining your seat actually work. It is thanks to those tiny pleasures that the heart of a traveller beats a bit higher — you see, we do not need much to be happy.