For someone who has done a whole lot of traveling by road, the last two years have been dominated by rail transportation and the experience has been both interesting and phenomenal. I like how relaxed I get whenever I'm traveling on a train and I only wish the train terminals would be spread across all parts of the country.
If that becomes the case and we get to have speed trains, I may well bid farewell to car trips, especially when it's a long-distance trip. I'm not the biggest fan of going long distances in a Car and this probably has so much to do with the fact that I don't have my car. Those who have their car wouldn't share this same sentiment.
In addition to that, I've had a lot of uninspiring traveling experience by road. Bad road is a big issue here. While traveling by road is already as stressful as it comes, the uniform folks who mount checkpoints at different points contribute to making traveling by road a very bad experience, especially for young lads.
The last time I traveled from the Southern part of Nigeria to the SouthEastern part of the country, I left home by 5.40am to leave with the first bus and hopefully get home by evening. That's the plan, but I already know from experience that things can go wrong a dozen ways. This time around, the drama started at the transit Company where I booked a seat.
The first bus was supposed to leave by 7am, but we spent an extra hour in the transit company. They wasted a lot of time loading the bus before we finally commenced the journey. The driver was a pro in hitting the gas. He sped like a race car at any given opportunity until we got into areas where there was huge traffic.
We sat in the traffic for some minutes and the heat was making everyone uncomfortable despite the AC that was in the car. It would have been nice to step out of the vehicle and get some fresh air while we waited for the traffic to be cleared, but we were still in the early hours of our journey. Upon inquiry, it was discovered that two heavy-duty vehicles had an accident ahead and affected one lane in the expressway.
About 40 minutes into that, our driver ran out of patience and decided to improvise by taking a more rural route for the trip. The good news about this is that the bus was no longer stuck in the traffic jam. However, the bad side of this decision is that there were barricades set up on the rural routes. To cross each barricade, the villagers positioned themselves and were billing drivers a ridiculously high amount. It was a "pay and cross or turn around" affair.
After passing through routes like that for an hour or thereabout, we reconnected to an expressway and carried on with the journey. We were already 2.5 hours behind schedule and I just knew that more drama could still show up before we came to the end of the journey. This time around, it came from the uniformed men at Police Checkpoints. That was the most frustrating part of the entire journey.
We passed a lot of checkpoints and our driver tried as much as possible to not be extorted by them. However, the checkpoints we crossed in Edo State were a different experience. Those Policemen were not laughing. They made it obvious that what they want is a bribe and our driver wasn't very receptive to their demand. So, we got packed by the roadside and every guy on the bus got body searched from hair to toe.
They managed to delay us for almost an hour and as you can imagine, I ended up getting home at night.
NB: This is exactly what happened when I traveled by road in November 2023. I know I won't be forgetting that anytime soon.
Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop or Comma.
Thumbnail Image is taken from Unsplash
Additional Image is also taken from Unsplash