In the daylight hours, I feared more for the lives of the people and animals on the road. But now well into the night, the road was empty except for vehicles. The rest of passengers, all Indians, seemed to getting to sleep alright. Not me. I was too busy keeping an eye on the drivers' driving, now fearing more for my own life. The two drivers did change every few hours, which was somewhat of a relief. Except that they both drove like maniacs. No one told me about any mountains either. But from about 10:00 pm until 4:00 am the land mass between every town seemed to be a mountain pass. 

We literally went up and down mountains like they were using them for trial runs of the 'Goa-Bombay Bus Rally.' The pitch blackness, the roads without any white lines or lights to guide us along didn't make the driver any more cautious. 

Passing a slower bus, going up a mountain on a blind bend? -  no problem - we did it often. Most of the traffic really late on were other buses from Goa area (You could tell by the plates). We did get passed at times by them, but we certainly caught up and passed them back. This happened all through the night. 

They were racing each other to Bombay. Was there possibly an unwritten code between Goan drivers to race and overtake at any opportunity, so as to keep the driver's alert? I think so. But alert or not, I genuinely felt uneasy about this whole journey. The driver drove that powerful Indian bus up and down those mountains, around those hairbend turns, as if it was a Porsche - I don't maneuver my Ford Escort as well as he did this giant bus.

I continually thought we were going over the edge, or that we were going to hit an oncoming vehicle when overtaking blindly. And I wished he wouldn't put so much faith in those brakes. Or was that it. Were they, the passengers all sleeping soundly, not worried about dying because they truly believed in re-incarnation? I just couldn't relax and sleep. If I was going to die, I wanted to see it happen! But at about 3:30 or 4:00 am, my eyelids took over. I slept lightly for the last two hours. 

At around 6:00 am we pulled into Greater Bombay and headed for the center, stopping 25 minutes later. I got off after 14 hours on an Indian bus, still in one piece somehow, my only affliction being a very numb butt. Never again will I penny pinch pennies again! On the way back it's the hovercraft!