If I had to ask myself what I liked least about India, it would definitely be the noise. It’s a very noisy country. During the day, the constant honking of cars gives you a splitting headache. And in hotels, you often wake up because someone outside your window decided to sing Indian songs at 6 in the morning.
But this hotel turned out to be the noisiest of the whole trip. It seemed like all the guests jumped up at 4 a.m. and made such a racket that it was simply impossible to sleep. They were shouting and making a commotion for about an hour and a half; I even suggested to Volchy that we get up earlier and head to Palitana. But he said it would be better to wait for sunrise — and that was the right call — wandering around the city in the dark wasn’t very appealing. As a result, around 6 I drifted into a half-sleep, and at 7 the alarm went off… Of course, we didn’t get enough sleep, but in India, as I’ve already written, getting enough sleep is a difficult task.
The bus was scheduled to leave in half an hour — that’s what the Indian man at the ticket window at the bus station told us. For a long time, we couldn’t figure out which platform we needed; they were marked with Indian numerals. A guy who spoke English more or less told us where to wait for the bus and said that he was also going to Palitana.
Our bus arrived 15 minutes late, and immediately a crowd of Indians rushed to the door from nowhere. People were throwing bags through the open windows, taking seats. By the time Volchy jumped on board, all the seats were supposedly taken by someone. But later, once everyone had settled in, we did indeed get two seats next to each other.
The road from Bhavnagar to Palitana is terribly battered. We sat at the back of the bus and kept bouncing over the bumps. After a while, the conductor came by and we bought tickets — cheap, for 66 rupees. The trip took about an hour and a half.
At the bus station, we started thinking about what to do next. We were choosing between staying here overnight or going to Ahmedabad in the evening. Volchy said, let’s go up the mountain with our backpacks — and off we went. More precisely, we found an auto-rickshaw and for 50 rupees rode to the start of the steps up the mountain. Walking with backpacks was manageable, although of course it would have been much better without them.
