Apart from the three trips on which I was co-driver, I was unequivocally the boss, and I enjoyed the prestige and glory that came with the position. Being the final arbiter in such matters as route, timings, and accommodations, and the chief adviser for all the rest, I existed to be wooed, cajoled, bribed, or otherwise won over by a host of vested interests, from vendors and hoteliers to tour guides and anybody with an attraction to appeal to the insatiable curiosity of the passengers.

In some countries, suave young men had a vested interest in flattering the driver and providing him with confidential information and access to local facilities. To such engaging young men, an overland bus with its prized cargo of girls was an opportunity to sow wild oats with maximum irresponsibility and minimum endeavor. The driver, as the guardian of the prize, was mainly to be wooed and flattered. In fact, the driver was God, or might feel that he was God, until such time as the effects of intoxication subverted all propriety and the weak and willing succumbed to indiscretion.

Actually, most of the eligible female passengers I considered were beyond the beguiling influence of young charmers promoting local mystique and themselves with a quaint command of English. Whatever those young ladies did was done in the light of day, and what I have said on the matter in no way is meant to impugn their characters. In other words, they were aware of what they were doing.

As was to be expected, not all amorous hopefuls were young charmers full of adulatory zeal. I recall a scene in Varanasi, a sacred city in Northern India. Situated on the banks of the holy river Ganges, Varanasi is a city where pious Hindus choose to die if they can, an aspiration that could not have been farther from the wishes of the passengers, some of whom had gathered, after a recital by a local sitar player, in the largest of the hotel rooms at our disposal. At various levels of intoxication, they were cavorting and generally playing around as only Australians can and will do at the slightest opportunity. In contrast to the general piety of the city, they were decidedly profligate.

That night, along with their tanned, mainly Australasian whiteness, other hues, decidedly Indian, appeared in the room. The hotel owner and a middle-aged friend of his were, to all intents and purposes, trying to relax and enjoy what must have been, for them, an alien atmosphere, a fact that their forced affability and smiling countenances did nothing to refute. Curious about his poorly disguised ambivalent demeanor, I took an opportunity during a lull in the mildly dissolute social intercourse to request that the hotel proprietor’s friend identify himself. He volunteered in an impertinent manner, “I am the Chief of Police.” Joke or not, the uninhibited and unashamed abandon of the scene around us, rampant with good clean fun as far as the passengers were concerned, left nothing to be excused or justified as far as I was concerned. Having now another good reason to terminate my dutiful presence in the room, I retired at the earliest opportunity.

Where things were leading there, I preferred not to know, seeing no conclusion but embarrassment and frustration.