We were scheduled to leave for Mount Abu in the morning but Bish greeted us with some bad news - the town of Mount Abu was on strike for 3 days and nothing would be open. Bish had made special arrangements for our hotel to open for us and to charter a bus to take us there. You can do anything in India if you have money. As you can imagine, no one was thrilled at the prospect of visiting a town that didn't want us, but Bish assured us at least that it wasn't dangerous. Our bus stopped at an ATM since there wouldn't be any open in Mount Abu, but it took us 4 machines until we found one that would give us money. I assume many Indian ATMs don't have proper network connections to interact with foreign banks.
The main highway to Mount Abu was pretty sketchy - it was a divided 4-lane highway, although we passed a number of cars that were driving the opposite direction on our side of the division. We also saw numerous buses with dozens of people riding on the roof rack above the bus (where you are meant to put luggage), and some jeeps with a couple of passengers standing on the back bumper and hanging on to the roof. We had to take a lot of detours because the road was sometimes built through a mountain and the rock was really brittle and not fastened with any pegs or mesh, and there had clearly been some landslides - there were parts of the road where 1-4 lanes were covered with so much rock that if you didn't see the road going into the rock, it just seemed to be part of the mountain.
We stopped at a rest sop which was definitely the worst washroom experience yet - it seemed to be a hotel, but with holes in the wall instead of doors or windows, and no electricity or running water. To get to a washroom you walked into one of the rooms, past the tenants bags of stuff, and through the opening where there should be a door. And there, in someones hotel room, in front of the doorway with no door, and window which was just a hole into the hallway, was a squatting hole with no water, except for the puddle of pee and smeared brown stuff around it. Living the life of luxury! On the bright side, all our hotels are way better than this one!
While at the rest stop, Bish also told us about how some of the local tribes are pirates by night - they have bows and arrows and stop and loot cars on the highway after dark.
We finally arrived in Mount Abu to find Bish hadn't been lying - everything was closed! No markets, restaurants, shops, internet, banks or attractions were open. Just our hotel, which he had bribed to open for us (after getting permission from the town). Craig and I walked to the "lake" that Bish had told us about, with the intention of sitting by it and reading, however it turned out to be more of a small pond filled with garbage. We ended up reading in our room most of the afternoon with a short break when the power went out.
The group went for dinner together at a restaurant Bish had bribed to open for us. Craig and I tried two local dishes - one was a mixture of local herbs and the other was chickpea flour balls in some sort of Indian sauce. Both were very tasty!
Since the town was closed, many in the group thought this would be a good time to play drinking games. By the end of the night, Bish was jovially drunk and telling us all about how amazing the blue girl from Avatar is.
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