My Colombian visa was only valid for 30 days, and I had spent way too many of those days in Cali. This meant that I would now have to rush through the other Colombian cities that I wanted to visit. The next one on that list was Bogota, the capital city.

In the hostel in Cali, I had heard horror stories of overnight buses being stopped in the middle of nowhere and the passengers being robbed at gun-point. So I was really reluctant to take an overnight bus, but taking a day-time bus would mean losing yet another of my precious Colombia days. Finally I decided to risk it and go for the evening bus. Soon after we had left Cali, the bus stopped and men with guns got on board. Everyone in the bus was made to alight and lean against the bus with our palms pressed against the bus and our feet slightly apart. Everyone was then patted down. All the foreigners in the bus, me included, were asked to handover our passports. Dear reader, you may now dab at that nervous sweat that is forming at your brow, because those armed men were uniformed soldiers of the Colombian army and they were looking for drug traffickers. Once they were satisfied with the frisking and had verified that the passports were in order, they returned our passports and we were on our way once again.

The bus dropped me off in Bogota early in the morning, and I approached a nearby policeman to help me with directions to my hostel. He in turn called a younger policeman, clearly someone in his first days at the job, and put him in charge of directing me.

The young policeman was surprised and also excited to meet me, the only Indian he had ever seen. Within the limitations of my Spanish, we managed to talk about a few topics while waiting for my bus. There were two other “touristy” looking people also waiting there, so I asked them if they were going in the same direction as me. It turned out that they were, so the 3 of us decided to share a taxi. I thanked the young policeman, and gave him one of my many 10 Rupee notes, which he gladly accepted.

Graffiti somewhere along the way

My companions in the taxi were a girl from France and a local Colombian man. The guy was a theatre artist who came to Bogota often to perform in theatre shows. He was a nice man and voluntarily gave both of us his phone number and asked us to call him if we ran into any trouble while in Bogota. We parted ways in the historical centre of Bogota and I carried on towards my hostel.

The Bajaj Pulsar is one of the most popular motorcycles in Colombia

After keeping my bags at the hostel, I went looking for free wi-fi and discovered a cosy little cafe with friendly staff and a really nice ambience. I had been in touch with a girl from Poland called Barbara, and she was reaching Bogota around the same time as I was. It turned out that she had already arrived the previous day and we agreed to meet later in the evening at the weekly couchsurfing language practice meeting.

Traffic in Bogota