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Drugged and Robbed in India
The woman in blue never lets her group of women out of her sight. A young man also keeps them under his control at all times. They first told me they were going to Delhi to see their husbands. One woman never sat up, the 3 day, 2 night, trip, one threw up all the time, another cried. Where are they really going? The lady in blue first told me she was a cook in Bahrain, She "helped a lady just like me, to get a job, and find a rich husband". She gave me lots of chapati, a dry small round flat bread. She put a sticky black somewhat bitter "jam" on it. When it was dark, I felt hands on my knee, then all over my body. I could see one of the women searching me, but I could not move, I was drugged. She threw my shawl up over my shoulder and complained loudly, "my camera was gone". I had hid it earlier in a bag under my seat. She reached for my money bag, and I leaned againest the window more, to prevent her from taking it. The woman on the left side and another woman not shown, along with a "brother", were pickpocketing me. In the morning I did not remember anything. When I got to Delhi, almost all my money had been stolen, a few hundred dollars. The woman in blue begged me to come to her "apartment" to stay with her, and finally gave me a business card. She is a human trafficker. She smuggled those women out of Nepal, "for jobs in Bahrain", she told me. It is againest the Nepalese law for Nepali women to work in the middle east. She would get me a "job". I thought then, she was selling them in India to someone, it is big money, (but maybe they were Maoists?) They were not there for a good purpose.
The right woman in blue was in charge of everyone, and transporting Nepali women for some end result in her pocket. She gave me the sticky "jam" on the bread several times to eat.
The pickpocket, and the "brother". He watched the women like a hawk.
The government bus driver tried to leave with all my bags. He wanted me to give him over $30 to get my bags back. I stood in front of the bus, when he tried to drive off. He had parked in a deserted black alley behind the station. I leaped back in the bus. He jumped up and down laughing, on my bags. The co-driver also thought this was hilarious. Then the driver kicked them down the stairs. Two coolies saw this, took my bags, and carried them to a rickshaw. They refused my money, because they were so horrified at what they had seen. They said, they "could not take it". many tourist and locals are drugged or even poisoned daily.
The man on the right is yelling at me to take my bags off the bus, or pay over $30 extra dollars for the trip. The trip itself is about $5. My bags do not cost anything. He refuses to put them on the roof, and uses them to fill in the front, and make it a huge bed. Everyone walks, spills, and sleeps on my cds, and fragile things.
The UP government bus.
The three employees who have no respect for a woman, a tourist or a grandmother. Me! They give India a bad name and shoud be fired.
I have eaten food from strangers in 11 years of travel. This was the only time I was drugged that I know of. At the end of my 4 1/2 year long trip, theft had become common. Every bus ride something was stolen, even by breaking my bags' locks while on the roof.