Dave Tapsell
Overland Buses(ii)
Afghanistan: October 1968
This is a 1948 Maudslay bus (JXM 563) I was co-driving from London to India; in this shot we'd pulled up on the deserted road from Herat, about 90 miles from Kandahar, and from nowhere appeared an Afghan soldier, accompanied by a little man in a suit (on the right) who was offering to change money. The weather was still fairly hot; the front windscreen opened to let even more hot air into the bus – plus even more dust.
On the front of the vehicle, its destination indicator still said, 'Ramsgate' – the nearest we'd been to Ramsgate was catching a cross-channel ferry at Dover. On arrival at Delhi, we had driven about 6,000 miles and taken five weeks to do so. At Delhi I left the bus and travelled to Calcutta by train; from there I flew to Bangkok, because in those days Burma was still closed – foreigners were not allowed to travel through the country. After a series of train journeys down through Thailand and Malaysia, I eventually arrived in Singapore, where it was impossible to find a cheap way to get to Darwin, in the north of Australia. By then I was well and truly skint: I had to bite the bullet and send a telegram to England for £50 to be wired to a Singapore bank, so that I could buy a plane ticket to Darwin. When I arrived in Australia I had just AU$2, and a year later when I boarded a ship bound for Los Angeles I had more money than I'd ever had before. This was the late 1960s and in Oz the lower cost of living meant I could save money, whereas in England, it was very difficult.
After I left it in India, the bus was then driven by its owner, back across Pakistan to Afghanistan – where it was sold – to begin its third career as a local bus operating in the Kabul district.
Overland Buses(ii)
Afghanistan: October 1968
This is a 1948 Maudslay bus (JXM 563) I was co-driving from London to India; in this shot we'd pulled up on the deserted road from Herat, about 90 miles from Kandahar, and from nowhere appeared an Afghan soldier, accompanied by a little man in a suit (on the right) who was offering to change money. The weather was still fairly hot; the front windscreen opened to let even more hot air into the bus – plus even more dust.
On the front of the vehicle, its destination indicator still said, 'Ramsgate' – the nearest we'd been to Ramsgate was catching a cross-channel ferry at Dover. On arrival at Delhi, we had driven about 6,000 miles and taken five weeks to do so. At Delhi I left the bus and travelled to Calcutta by train; from there I flew to Bangkok, because in those days Burma was still closed – foreigners were not allowed to travel through the country. After a series of train journeys down through Thailand and Malaysia, I eventually arrived in Singapore, where it was impossible to find a cheap way to get to Darwin, in the north of Australia. By then I was well and truly skint: I had to bite the bullet and send a telegram to England for £50 to be wired to a Singapore bank, so that I could buy a plane ticket to Darwin. When I arrived in Australia I had just AU$2, and a year later when I boarded a ship bound for Los Angeles I had more money than I'd ever had before. This was the late 1960s and in Oz the lower cost of living meant I could save money, whereas in England, it was very difficult.
After I left it in India, the bus was then driven by its owner, back across Pakistan to Afghanistan – where it was sold – to begin its third career as a local bus operating in the Kabul district.