(Wednesday, 27th June, 1990)
Pursuit and boarding the bus, and disturbing advice.
By our return to the ticket office, the bus had left from its terminus. Now to reach it we had to race by Rickshaw to intercept it.
Three of us squeezed into the vehicle as it lurched away at speed. We sighted the bus up ahead, and my co-passenger explained if we didn’t meet it within two stops it would be lost. At the first attempt to intercept, the bus had already pulled away, now we were in close pursuit. Up ahead the bus reached its second stop. Any moment it would resume its journey. But our vehicle pulled up as the driver climbed into his seat.
In moments I had boarded and my pack placed atop the bus. I had a hard seat in a noisy, uncomfortable sweat-box for the next 24 hours.
The man beside me tried to initiate conversation. But I was told to neither leave the bus before the end stop in Srinagar nor reveal the details of the people I was meeting. It was possible to pass that information forward. Someone else would be waiting with my name and details at an earlier stop.