The Bus to Woodstock

The Bus to Woodstock School

The train arrived at Dehra Dun before noon – a small city’s train station.  The weather was merely hot, like Texas in summer; and traffic was merely crowded.  The school’s yellow bus holds about 30 students.  We crammed into there, and a couple of taxis besides, and drove to a nearby restaurant for lunch, then back on the bus for the hair-raising ride up 1000 meters in about 20km of a narrow twisting two-lane road.   Further delaying us was the fact that the bus had to take a long detour route along some very narrow mountain roads because of its size.   But, by 4pm, we arrived at the school, now shrouded in mist, where the administrators were standing to greet us (How long had they been standing there waiting?).  I was impressed by their hospitable greeting.

We filed into the cafeteria for a spot of tea, then walked to our respective houses, with our pre-assigned “buddies”.  As our buddies lived near us, we walked together first to our house, where we dropped our bags and delightedly found all of our suitcases awaiting us.  The house was solid but old and a bit dusty, barely-furnished.  And the kitchen and bathroom were a patchwork of occasional cabinetry and cement.   Our buddies invited us for dinner, along with another old-timer couple.  Very friendly, but as with many old-timers, they all regaled us with stories of spiders and scorpions and accidents and monkeys and how much worse it used to be.   This frightened and demoralized us, when returning to our empty house, especially as the monsoon rains finally started falling.   We collapsed into bed, worried about this commitment we had made.