Two weeks on a Greyhound, and a writer’s budget tour of the US

A selfie on the Greyhound double decker.

What you need to know:

  • Kenya’s “summer bunnies”, as the diaspora is affectionately referred to, often save up throughout the year for their annual pilgrimage home.
  • But did you know that, conversely, you too can save up, travel and see at least half of the US in less than two weeks?
  • And for as little as Sh65,000? Well, this is of course, besides the cost of air travel from Nairobi to the US, which, on average, is in the region of $1,300 (about Sh118,000)

Last year the iconic Greyhound Bus Service celebrated 100 years of continuous service to America, and it was during that landmark period that I seized the opportunity to sample the services of one of the world’s oldest and most popular bus operations.

My tiring, energy-sapping but nonetheless exciting trip across 20 of America’s 50 states lasted 10 days and saw me seated on a Greyhound for a combined 148 hours and five minutes, or six days and 20 minutes!

The price I had to pay, besides fatigue, was swollen legs and ankles, occasioned by the extended periods on the bus. I’d read about the risks of getting the fatal deep vein thrombosis, a condition derived from such swelling; and, therefore, took all necessary precautions, including drinking lots of water, staying hydrated and walking up and down the bus aisles every so often.

The first leg of my epic road trip was from Eugene (Oregon State) to Las Vegas (Nevada), a 1,497-kilometre section that would take me 27 hours and 45 minutes. The bus ticket cost Sh17,226 and the journey snaked through Sacramento and Los Angeles, both in the state of California. Here, my notes:

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It’s 9.35am at the Eugene Greyhound station and I’m in well ahead of our 11.35am departure for Las Vegas, having paid attention to a friends’ advice to be at the station early.

“Get in early so that you are among the first in line to avoid getting a seat close to the toilets,” a friend had suggested, while another was more frightening: “Look out for weird-looking characters at the station.”

A shaggy, rather worse-for-wear ragamuffin donning a dirty T-shirt written “Weed” on the front reminds me of the “travel advisory.” I recall a 2008 incident in which Vince Li, a mentally unstable Chinese immigrant, killed and ate pieces of his seatmate on a Greyhound in Manitoba.

As the bus pulls out of the station, 40 minutes behind schedule, the driver reads out the riot act.

“Use the toilet responsibly. Smoking and alcohol on this bus is prohibited and it is against federal law to make loud noise or use the speaker phone,” he says through the bus’ public address system.

“The Wi-Fi should be working now and our next stop will be a 10-minute stop at Roseburg,” he adds, as some travel-weary passengers rest their heads against the tinted windows and fade away into deep slumber, while fresh travellers, including myself, soak in the scenery as the vast American countryside rushes by.

We stop briefly at Medford, Oregon, and the friendly driver tells me that the normal shift for Greyhound drivers is a maximum 10 hours.

After the pleasantries and a subsequent change of drivers at Redding, we finally pull into Sacramento, California, for a one-hour-30-minute break during which the bus is washed, serviced and fuelled.

I take the opportunity to grab a $7.75 (Sh700) tuna sandwich and coffee from a restaurant, post something on Facebook and, before long, we are off again, on to Los Angeles for a bus change before shooting through a five-hour sector via Barstow, California, our trip ending in “Sin City”, Las Vegas at 1.20pm on a sunny Thursday afternoon.

Weird things happen in Las Vegas, hence the famous phrase: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

It’s in Vegas, for instance, that one Saturday morning in 2004, American pop star Britney Spears stunned the entertainment world when she married her childhood friend, Jason Allen Alexander, in the most bizarre of nuptials.

Everything about the wedding was weird. From its timing (3.30am on January 3) to the duration of the service (seven minutes), the cost (70 dollars, or Sh6,000) and even wedding outfit (Spears wore torn jeans and a baseball cap).

But perhaps the standout bizarre thing about the nuptials was the length of the couple’s marriage. Just 55 hours! Spears was granted divorce on Monday, January 5, at 12.24pm by a Clark County Family Court judge, the pop star having argued that she “lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to the marriage”.

Surprising as that may be, such shotgun weddings and equally cameo marriages are commonplace in Las Vegas, a city unique for its ubiquitous wedding chapels where stories similar to Spears’ are told every day.

Fun in Las Vegas is endless. From the world-famous musical fountains at the Bellagio Hotel, to the Mandalay Bay beach, and the Hakkasan Night Club, home of one of the world’s highest paid disc jockeys, DJ Tiesto, who commands a jaw-dropping $200,000 to $400,000 (Sh18 million to Sh36 million) per night on the deck.

“This town is built on fast women, fast money and alcohol… but it’s all off the back of entertainment,” Don Alves Jnr, the Production Manager (Entertainment) at the MGM International, tells me in a quick interview at the MGM Grand Hotel, venue of the world’s richest boxing fights and pop concerts.

The MGM is expected to, in May this year, host the richest sports event of all time, an eagerly-awaited boxing title fight between Floyd Mayweather Jnr of USA and Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines, two of the world’s best pound-for-pound boxers.

“Entertainment is what makes Las Vegas pop and sizzle. It’s what draws people into our playground and that’s why it’s the biggest Disneyland in the world,” Alves adds.

After a sumptuous dinner at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, one of the five-star Vegas hotels in the MGM Resorts International stable, I prepare to depart “Sin City” at 6.30am the following day, confident that whatever happened in Vegas... will stay there.

The second leg of my bus trip, a 26-hour-20-minute journey, would take me to Dallas, Texas, through Flagstaff (Arizona), Albuquerque (New Mexico), Amarillo (Texas) and Fort Worth (Texas) at a cost of Sh16,530 and covering 1,407 kilometres.

It’s largely dreary desert terrain, with nothing really to see, the bus’ free wi-fi offering me browsing solace although, sadly, Greyhound rules don’t allow streaming of some sites, including popular movie website Netflix. Damn!

We depart Las Vegas at 6.40am on Sunday, arriving at Dallas the following day at 1.00pm.

“Where on your trip do you sleep?” my colleague at the Daily Nation newsroom, Patrick Nzioka, asks on Facebook as I finish my one-dollar coffee and hop onto the bus at 3.20am to continue the overnight trip, with the next scheduled long stop being in Amarillo, Texas, at 5.30pm, 14 hours later!

On the bus is where I sleep, I respond, mentally, to my colleague’s question.

I hardly sleep, though, as the bus whistles through the night and I watch the morning unfold through the Greyhound’s windscreen. We arrive in Gallup, New Mexico, at 7.50am for a 30-minute break.

New Mexico is where pioneer Kenyan marathon runner, Kapsabet-born Ibrahim Hussein, trained in his heyday before completing a clean sweep of the Honolulu Marathon (1985-87) and hitting the cover of Time magazine as the first black man to win the New York Marathon, in 1987.

Several Kenyans still live and train in New Mexico, including the legendary, record-breaking Henry Rono and Olympic champion Peter Rono.

Our longest stop on this leg is one hour and 10 minutes at Albuquerque, New Mexico, where a couple of plainclothes police officers come on board for a routine, extremely polite security check.

“How are you sir? I’m a police officer. May I ask you a few questions?” one of them approaches me, waving his police ID.

“Well, of course,” I reply.

“Do you have any luggage on board? Where are you going to? Where are you from? How long have you been in the US?”

After replying that I’m a Kenyan journalist sampling the Greyhound experience, he asks no further questions, wishing me safe travels and a great time in the US.

My six-hour stop-over in Dallas is jam-packed as I visit my cousins who live here, book my next bus and freshen up at a cousin’s residence, catching up over breakfast with family.

I decide to sample the double-decker Megabus, one of Greyhound’s budget affiliates, for my next leg, a 1,269-kilometre trip via Little Rock (Arkansas), Memphis (Tennessee) and Birmingham (Alabama State) at a cost of Sh4,263.

I’d been told the Megabus was cheaper and faster, but the downside, upon reaching the station, is that they only allow one piece of luggage free, with a $50 charge (Sh4,500) charge for an extra piece.

I have two suitcases but play ignorant with the Megabus driver, who is sympathetic enough to let me on board with the extra suitcase free of charge.

After a whirlwind tour of Dallas, zooming past Elm Street, the famous scene of President John F Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, I hop onto the Megabus to Atlanta via Memphis, Tennessee where another famous America, pop star Elvis Presley, moved to as a 13-year-old in 1948.

There is no waiting room for the Megabus in Memphis and as I wait to board the next bus to Atlanta, one of my friends, following my trip on Facebook, wonders why I didn’t hire a car and drive around instead, but before I can respond, a Boston-based former schoolmate interjects that the bus experience is worth the while.

“We have been here (in USA) for decades but only experienced half of what you have,” he posts.

The six-hour layover in Atlanta is adequate for me to visit my younger brother and another cousin in the capital of Georgia State.

They are happy to catch up over breakfast and take me on a tour of Atlanta’s landmarks, including the CNN television headquarters, Coca Cola’s global headquarters and the Olympic Park that brought back memories of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, where Kenya eked out just one gold medal through Joseph Keter in the steeplechase.

I’m stunned that there is a Kikuyu FM radio station and also a church where sermons are delivered in Gikuyu, though the latter is hardly surprising as in Arlington, Texas, I’d encountered a Kisii church complete with a Kisii congregation and pastors.

After having to part with Sh4,500 charge for my second suitcase, I board the Megabus for my 1,134-kilometre leg from Atlanta to Chicago, Illinois, that would take 15 hours at a cost of Sh4,785, journeying through Nashville (Tennessee), Louisville (Kentucky) and Indianapolis (Indiana).

It is a largely uneventful sector and after a brief layover in a fast-paced Chicago, I’m off on my penultimate leg, a 1,465.7-kilometre hop to Minneapolis that would take me just eight hours and 45 minutes via Milwaukee in Wisconsin State, and cost Sh2,871.

Having departed Chicago at 9.45am, I arrive in Minneapolis at 6.30pm, happy that I would enjoy my first overnight stop and thus some decent sleep on a bed for the first time in over one week!

I would spend the day with my cousins George and Marcellus Mayaka, taking advantage of the “long” stay to visit George’s new, ground-breaking ‘Vom Vass’ liquor store at Maple Grove, visiting the “Mall of America” that was once the world’s second-largest shopping mall with over 40 million visitors annually, more than any mall in the world today.

The city tour cost my cousin Marcellus a ticket from the traffic police as he briefly stopped his car on a no-parking area to allow me take some photos of Target Centre, home of famous NBA basketball team Minnesota Timberwolves.

After a good night’s sleep, I’m ready for the final, and longest leg of my epic journey. It would take me one day, 20 hours and 35 minutes, or rather 44 hours and 35 minutes, from Minneapolis back to my starting point at Eugene at a cost of Sh20,100 on the Greyhound bus via Fargo (North Dakota State), Billings (Montana State), Seattle (Washington State) and Portland (Oregon).

There is a 40-minute delay out of Minnesota due to an accident but soon we are cruising, briefly stopping over at Bismarck (North Dakota) for a change of drivers, the first driver having completed a nine-hour shift.

We get to Seattle at 7am on a Sunday morning for an hour’s stopover before embarking on the final, seven-hour sector to my final destination, Eugene.

Battered, I’m glad the journey is over as the bus pulls into the Eugene station to drop us off and pick fresh passengers whom I don’t envy at all, having covered almost 10,000 kilometres and nine sleepless nights to see the West Coast of America and get the Greyhound ride off my bucket list. It was worth the trouble.