My first trip to China, 15  years ago, was memorable in so many ways.  Everything was new, and it was hard to know what to expect from one moment to another.  But perhaps what was most unforgettable about the whole trip was one really long night spent on a bus.

A bus that wasn’t moving.

The problem that had us held up on the road wasn’t with the bus, though.  The bus was working perfectly fine, just as it had been all of the 10+ hours we spent on it each day for a week.  And our driver’s skill was certainly not the problem. I’ve probably never been more impressed, before or since, with anyone’s ability behind the wheel as his, the way he managed that bulky vehicle on paths that seemed to present a challenge for the local goats and their shepherds.

The problem was a landslide.  We weren’t, thankfully, trapped under it, but the debris was right in the middle of  our path, and there was no moving it that day.  We’d have to camp for the night, and wait for the crew to clear the mess up the next morning.

At first, it didn’t look too terrible.  The place where we stopped was beside a relatively clean stream (when we arrived, anyway… it was much less clean by the next morning), and there was a public washroom as well (which was not clean when we got there, and was rather horrifying by the time we left).  Shouldn’t be too bad to camp for a night in such a nice, scenic spot, right?  That’s what I thought, too… until I heard the word “bandits.”  Being that we were right smack in the middle of bandit country, our driver and guide were both a bit concerned, and hoping that enough buses would come along and get stuck at the same spot as us so that we could convoy together for safety.

Which also meant no one could get off of the bus once it got dark.

Fortunately, other buses showed up before long — a lot of other buses, all as crowded as ours.  (Hence the state of the washrooms and riverside when we left the next day.)  It kept us safe, but did nothing for our comfort level.

Our bus had only 2 empty seats.  Fortunately, due the high level of endurance the few foreigners (me, 3 Singaporeans, 1 Japanese, and 2 Koreans) on the bus had shown when the locals had pushed us around for the better part of the trip, we ended up having both of those seats on our rows way back at the back of the bus (where we’d been put to keep us out of the way, apparently).  As the seats had been vacated by part of our traveling party who left and headed to Yunnan before we started this leg of the trip, we were fortunate enough to have just a little space to make ourselves just a little more comfortable.

I am pretty much made to travel, as I can sleep anywhere, if I am tired enough.  (Despite my tendency toward insomnia during my routine life.)  Though it took a while for me to get to sleep, and even though I woke up a lot during the night, I did manage to rest some.  One of the friends traveling with me, though, was not so lucky.  She couldn’t get to sleep the whole night, and kept looking at her watch, hoping morning was near.  She would think, “OK, it’s been forever,” and then turn on her little green light, only to find out that 10 minutes had passed since the last time she had looked at the watch.  It was so dark, and so stuffy on the bus, and time just seemed to crawl by.

The next morning, once it was light, it did not take the work crew very long to make a path for us so that we could pass through the debris that had cluttered the road.  Overall, there wasn’t a lot to actually be afraid of through our experience, but it was one of those things that turns out to be so hard to forget — the long night, the dark bus, and the misgivings about who and what might be out there lurking.  It made threading our way through the rubble on the road the next day seem like a pleasant drive in the countryside.

Which it kind of was, if you don’t mind landslides and bandits.