One morning I walk to the bus station.
I am off to Tis Issat, the place where the Blue Nile tips over a cliff – and creates Africa’s second largest waterfall. Only losers take the bus, but the only other alternative – hiring a landcruiser, seems a tad boring.

I find I’ve missed the bus, and the next one is full.
My attempt to sneak into the full-up bus is a fiasco – “Piss off!!!” I am told by the conductor in Amharic – a sullen chap, looking quite wasted – must be all the diesel fumes. Shit out of luck – no standees allowed, I am told.
Confounded Ethiopian time had me confused. Folks here start counting time at 6 in the morning; sweet lazy 10am in the morning is 4 o’clock in the morning “Ethiopian time”.

“Next bus after one and a half hours…. My jeep very good!!…” says Tsegaye with a moronic grin, pointing somewhere into the distance – towards the one and a half hours. He’s been unsuccessfully trying to pimp his land cruiser to me.

Maybe it’s the extra strong coffee, I don’t really know, but I decide that the bus isn’t leaving without me today. Engine running, the bus is about to depart.
I bang on the door, yelling “Lemme in!!! I want to stand!!!” The conductor looks down, mildly amused.
After what sounds like a frantic struggle with a reluctant gearbox, the driver engages first.
By now I am hanging on, onto the door-frame, my feet resting on the thin wooden plank that serves as the footboard.

Back when I was in school, foot board travel or ‘foot boarding’ was the dark art of the peewee elite.
Even if a bus was empty, it was “cool” to ride on the footboard – hang on with your fingernails, stick your neck out, whoooo!!! I am so cool! (Barring the few times I almost became road kill doing it)
“It won’t do you any good!!” folks had told me back then.
“Hah!!! Proved you wrong!!!”
I am thrilled to be doing this again.

The bus inches forward, slowly.
“….my jeep!!!” the disconsolate Tsegaye is now jogging alongside, tugging my shirt.

Sorry buster, nothing is getting me off this bus – not unless it has 2 chrome wheels, a 1000cc engine, and a pole-dancer-in-leather at the back.
Tsegaye gives up – he is under attack – flayed across the back by an old man wielding an umbrella like a samurai warrior – bellowing in Amharic “Stop bothering them people!!!”

And the conductor finally relents; I am in!
I buy a ticket, and hang on to a seat-handle as the bus lugubriously leaves the station.

The bus is a typical third-world utilitarian variety:
Take a 3-ton truck chasis. Hammer a wood and tin structure around it. Drill a few gaping holes for windows. Throw in a few padded steel benches.
And what we have is the most bad-ass set of wheels since Jan-Michael Vincent’s remarkable armored car in Damnation Alley.

A pudgy man, beaming with bonhomie and coughing with tuberculosis pushes a sack of grain towards me. I can sit on it, he indicates.
The bus moves feebly along, seemingly unable to exceed 25 km/hour – nothing to worry about; I am comfortably perched on my millet beanbag.

I notice something strange about Ethiopian bus travel – all the windows are sealed shut.
My attempt to slide one open is met with angry glares – either people don’t like fresh air, or are mortally scared of catching some kind of air-borne plague that I don’t know about.

The plump man – a Mr. Taranaj is a carpenter; I get introduced to his wife – a chubby woman with sparkling eyes, a blinding smile and a heavy load of jewelry around her neck. She has her fingers wrapped around a gagged and tied-up chicken – only a muffled cluck betrays that it is being held hostage

Mr Taranaj doesn’t speak English – but a high school student with rudimentary English knowledge plays interpreter.
I tell Mr & Mrs. Taranaj that I’m from India.
Turns out they watch Bollywood Hindi movies, and especially enjoy the song and dance numbers. Mrs.Taranaj giggles like a teenager as her husband tries to sing a few syllables of an unidentifiable film song.

What is my religion? The missus asks.
I tell them I am a Hindu.
What was that about?
I try giving a simple explanation of Hinduism and its main Gods.
Heads shake with comprehension, and everybody in the back of the bus listens to the interpreter with rapt attention. Mrs. Taranaj is particularly interested in all the temple bells that seem to ring by magic – she’s seen that in all the Bollywood movies.
I sit back feeling smug, I don’t often get such a receptive audience for my speeches.
That’s until, Mr.Taranaj declares, “huhh.…so you are what they call Protestant!!”

I learn that his father was an ‘Islamu’ and mother ‘Orthodox Christian’, so now he follows both religions, but he really thinks he is ‘Orthodox’ at heart - a Mama’s boy.

Among the tallest structures in Bahir Dar were the soaring green and white minarets of the mosque, looking a bit like overgrown firecracker rockets – but, a strong reminder that half of Ethiopia’s population followed the Islamic faith.

The landscape is Van-Goghian picturesque – a dense patchwork of fields; a brook running here and there; all of it, stretching into the distance, into the backdrop of the misty Ethiopian highlands.
The ride to Tis Issat, takes an hour and a half and most of the road is nonexistent – washed away by the recent spate of heavy rains.

I get off the bus; my goodbye to Taranaj and his wife is laced with a tinge of sorrow. I watch them walk away, carrying the heavy millet sack between them; these graceful people – I'd known them for about an hour, and I would probably never meet them again.