You may wonder why I continue to take buses when many of my anecdotes of travel misfortune come from these trips. I was reflecting on this myself and realized the reason is that I love the stimulation of all of my senses that comes road travel.

There is nothing like road travel to see a country. I spend the hours taking in all the sights that make up the place I’m visiting. My last trip took me past endless fields of long emerald grasses grasping at the bus as it sped by. I passed numerous fishing villages, with stilted bamboo houses built over the water, in between them a rugged shore sharply piercing a sapphire blue sea with jagged volcanic stone.

For hours I not only saw the landscape but snippets of people’s lives. There are the basic things like oxen pulling plows and trucks being loaded with sugar cane, but then there are more unusual. One town I passed through had all the trees trunks wrapped in metallic gold foil, and in some yards I saw numerous triangular shaped wooden A frames about 2 feet high. At first, I thought they might be dog houses, but as I saw a chicken hop out from one, its leg tied to it by a piece of twine, I realized it was a shade shelter to protect it from the hot summer sun.

Also to be observed are the activities of the locals: hanging their laundry, stirring a pot on an open fire, preparing food together in groups, smoking around card tables, or just sitting in front of their homes watching as the traffic goes by. Then there are the people on the bus. Young school children in uniforms chattering away or the old couple to whom seats are made available even on a full bus. Of course, there’s no such thing as a full bus in this country; as you know from my other stories, there is always room for just one more person. After all, there’s nothing else on my lap, and the guy next to me already has his lap full with an agitated chicken, quite vocal about its displeasure of not being left at home.

Some buses are air conditioned, but most of the ones I take are ventilated by opening the windows, another nice feature of road travel. You get to feel the warm wind blowing against your face. It carries in the smells of things that you pass, not all of which you want to smell, but many that are enjoyable, like the smell of food being grilled at roadside stands. And with open windows, there’s no need to exit the bus to eat. Whenever the bus stops, vendors crowd the side of the bus holding up bags of things for sale. So many local dishes I’ve purchased through the open window of my bus.

Occasionally you reach a transfer point, a frenzy of activity as everyone simultaneously switches to the bus that will continue them on to their ultimate destination. It has the feel of musical chairs, and if you don’t move fast enough, you might not get a seat, or worse yet, have all the buses depart leaving you stranded in a dusty terminal until the next wave of buses arrives.

Your arrival and departure are other things made easier by riding the bus. Unlike airports, bus terminals tend to be located in the center of town, which can cut hours off your travel time if you consider transportation to and from a distant airport as well as arriving early to check in and pass through security. And there’s no lost luggage on a bus since it is always within site.

Yes, land travel exemplifies the expression, “it’s the journey, not the destination”, and for me the journey is a cornucopia of sensual stimulation; that which makes me feel alive and the reason I choose to spend half of every year on the road.