Rules of the road

On a recent tour of Western America, I discovered that travel involves many things I had never thought of before. The first thingwas luggage. The plane we took wouldn’t allow us to have a normal luggage bag as their size limitation was 16 inches. Sure, ladies can pack their makeup kits and a scarf and gentlemen their shaving kits and a few socks, but nothing else would fit in. If you are like me and pack 21 separate pieces for a 7 day trip, not counting extra pairs of shoes, then you are in bad luck. Either change only your makeup for the entire trip (the same outfit for all photos? Oh horror!) or pay thirty extra dollars.


After I finally paid the extra thirty dollars and got out of the tiny plane, I was faced with even more rules. In fact, I was reminded of one of them the hard way while on top of the Hoover dam. As the sunlight was pretty good that day, we decided to take pictures. But soon, the sun scorched us, and we decided to go for ice cream. Unfortunately, the rest of the passengers had gotten the idea sooner and gone for ice cream before us, so we were at the far end of a very long line. By the time we got our ice cream, it was time to go. But just before boarding the bus, the guard stopped us. “Ice cream not allowed on bus, you eat here,” he told us.

Under the gaze of 61 passengers who would have liked nothing better than to shove the ice cream down our throats, our dreams of enjoying the ice cream slowly evaporated. We gulped our cones down in hurry— an experience I am not eager to repeat. The driver finally started the bus, and kept the engine running. The hint was not subtle at all. With baleful faces, we threw the rest of the ice creams into a dustbin and boarded the bus.

We muttered bitterly about the stupid rules on tour buses whenever we saw someone breaking a rule that not even a five year old would.  At a chocolate factory we were taken to, where a lady gave each person two small bits to sample, the person ahead of us in the queue reached behind the counter and grabbed a big piece.

Not surprisingly, the lady got furious. “Please don’t reach behind the counter!” she yelled as she took the bag of chocolates away. We would have assumed that this rule doesn’t need to be written, but we were wrong.

Later on, we discovered the more sinister of the many unwritten rules of travelling. While selecting our tour package, for instance, we had scouted several tour companies before zeroing in on our decision. But we realised during the trip that those efforts had been in vain, for my friend who happened to observe a man handling his tour papers noticed that his receipts, that seemed to be from a different tour company, were actually of the same one as us. It looked as though websites of companies with enticing American names, like Sea Gull tours or Western tours were all different, but in the end, all of their bookings actually went to the same Chinese agent.

A similar collaboration was arranged for lunch. Like the night buses of Nepal which always stop at the same place for lunch, these tour buses too seemed to have their particular lunch stops. As usual, they stopped in the middle of nowhere with only one eatery in sight—which always happened to be a Chinese place, and invariably a buffet. This meant that we could not split the cost and share food, but that we would each have to pay a fixed price, ranging anywhere from ten to fifteen dollars per person.

This collaboration seemed to extend to passengers too. The Chinese were always prepared for any eventuality. If it was raining, they had umbrellas whereas we got wet, and if it was snowing, they had thick arctic jackets while we shivered. They always seemed to know where the best restaurants were, even in new places. Often when we didn’t see any shops around, they would be seen coming back with bags of delicacies. I bet all those instructions were only given in Chinese.

We had witnessed so many unwritten rules that when we were finally faced with a written one, we just ignored it. Sure, I knew that the plane allowed only two pieces of luggage, but I pushed my luck and brought my computer and purse along with the hand carry, making it three pieces in all. I was prepared to carry my laptop on my lap for the whole journey, but the lady at the counter would have none of it, so I had to push it into my purse willy-nilly. The woman at the counter let me go even though half the laptop was sticking out of my dainty purse. Later, the trains of Chicago prominently displayed the message that solicitation and gambling are illegal on board. The message was also repeatedly broadcast via speakers, and I wondered if these problems were serious enough for such vehement warnings. I wondered if the game of solitaire on my computer would count. But alas, I came across two written rules at a restaurant that simply defied all comprehension. “There will be a $5 charge for whining,” said one, and so we ate our food in complete silence. “Danger: Men Cooking,” said the other, as though we needed an alert.  I wish all rules of the road were so clearly spelled out.