We're not hitchhikers. Neither of us has ever been.
We've never taken off on a wild backpacking trip in some remote part of the world to brave all odds and enjoy every bit of the adventure. We're regular city girls who've been warned as kids to never ask for rides from strangers. Ever.
So doing exactly that for the first time seemed completely out of the question. Agreed, we were dead tired, agreed we had tons of bags and other sundry stuff weighing down on our not very strong shoulders and agreed that we were most likely to miss our train if we did not get to the station in time. But here we were, in the middle of this lovely winding and long (read never ending) stretch of a village road with no transport to ferry us back to the station.
Ideally, since the sun had gone down, we would've loved a nice leisurely walk more than anything. But time bound we were and 'not' with those bags. Not with 'those' bags please!
So on a whim and a little spur of the moment madness i stuck my thumb out just to see...i don't know...maybe if it actually works perhaps?! And to our great delight it did. But that wasn't as delightful when we realized we would still be riding with a complete stranger.
Of what i remember, the vehicle that stopped was a large rickety yet sturdy looking jeep. The man looked, well, like a regular middle-aged pot bellied, moustachioed country guy. I think he had worn a safari suit too.
Went with the look for sure!
So very hesitantly we asked him if he could give us a ride and he was not at all surprised strangely. Instead, very calmly he said that he'd drop us halfway and beyond that we'd have to walk it up. We were about to climb in when we realized that there was no back seat and so the two of us would have to push in on the front seat itself. We thought we'd manage and manage we did. Praying every second in our heads that he doesn't turn out to be a merry little psycho or a happy little creep.
Our overworked imagination brought us thankful disappointment as we got off the vehicle and thanked the kind and decent man. Since that first time, we've only become more sure of the goodness of humankind and have very successfully gotten free rides back each time we've been pressed for time. It's not the most exciting thing after a hard day at work but it's definitely something that adds that little extra something to our village trips. We hardly exchange more than five words, (of which three are thankyou!) with our driver. But in our list of varied modes of transport that we use to get to our Warli village and back, this one's the one that makes us smile a little.
