A Night On A Bus.

Being a very adventurous person, I have always loved travelling, and I have tried different means of transportation. Each of them has its pros and cons, but I would love to share an unforgettable experience.

This happened many years ago, when I visited Benin City in Edo State for the first time, for two purposes by road.

The first one was for my cousin's matriculation at the University of Benin, while the second was a tour around Igediuma.

Since I was travelling from Lagos, I and my siblings left our house pretty early to the park, and by 6:30 am, we were already at the park because we wanted to be the first batch to travel that day.

The bus was quite empty when we arrived at the park, so it was just me and two of my siblings. The bus driver told us to be patient; we couldn't leave until the bus was filled up.

At about 10 a.m., we finally left the park and embarked on the journey.

There are always different types of passengers while travelling on a road trip: the ones who come to sleep, the ones who eat anything and disturb the driver when they want to pee, the ones who watch a movie on their phone and just mind their business, the prayer warriors and preachers, the ones who love to gist with their seat partners, the ones who listen to music, and the one guy who is looking for love on a bus.

All of these passengers make the journey either annoying or funny, depending on who you are seated next to.

Since I was travelling with my older siblings, it was fun for me because I automatically became my siblings seatt partners, so I was quite comfortable being around them, so I caught some sleep occasionally, something I would hardly do if I was travelling alone. One or many valuables could be stolen, so one needs to watch out for themselves, more to that, there is severe insecurity on the highway, so if you snooze and it happens, you are on your own.

At about 5 pm, we got to a particular place around Benin, and then the traffic was terrible.

We stayed at that particular spot for almost two hours, and it began to get pretty dark, then suddenly we saw other drivers making a U-turn. "What's going on?" The passengers began to ask, until our driver got the signal that the bad boys were around, robbing those in front.

My heart immediately sank because I'd only heard of it from others who had travelled, but I had never witnessed it.

Everybody on our bus started hiding their valuables while our driver started looking for a way to get out of where we were; thankfully, he was experienced enough to manoeuvre his way, and then he headed to the nearest bus park, where he told us that we would spend the night right on the bus in the park.

I had never passed a night on a bus before, but that was my first time, and it was right beside the road. The driver told us to keep our valuables very well and set our phones on vibration. Just beside the bus, we saw some guys smoking and gisting, and I became more scared, so I and my siblings decided to take turns sleeping to look out for each other.

Even though I felt the urge to pee at the wee hour of the night, my guts didn't allow me to step down from the bus, so I held onto my pee until it was dawn. What a risky thing to do!

When it was about 6:30 am, our driver began his journey until we got to our destination at Ring Light Road in Benin, where we called our cousin to pick us up.

We were so tired and just had our bath and slept properly in the morning, and by 11 a.m. we headed to her matriculation centre.

The rest of the days we spent at Benin were used to tour around Igbowo and Igieduma, and we had so much fun, even though our journey at first was quite hectic.