Category: travel

Mysore – Chennai Shatabdi – evolving change – then and now

I recently had an opportunity to go to Chennai, using the already famous shatabdi express from Mysore to Chennai. I thought it was worth a blog post considering some nice changes that have taken place. So it finds a mention on the Bengaluru Blog.

Initially the Shatabdi’s looked to be just a variant of normal trains. The insides were plastic cushioned seats of blue colour, which were at best described as being reasonably though not ultimately comfortable for a long journey. For what was served on the train as food, you can see it yourself here.

 

 

Since then, this train has now metamorphed into something similar to European train standards in terms of the service, compartments, general cleanliness etc. The entire compartment set looks flashy, and of high grade design, with much larger windows to see nature at your heart’s content. One look at the new compartment and you realize the country has had some major technological and manufacturing advances recently. The seats are now plush green velvet feel, which makes it all the more swanky in terms of design.

The toilets have undergone some major upgradation in terms of look and feel, though I would personally feel that a doormat or two, some tissue paper for hand towel use, and some high grade soap could alter the perception of the loo standards dramatically. For now you have a press button flush, and a decent looking wash basin. One thing I still hate though is the fact that the door would open right on you leaving you with no space to come out properly and this is unacceptable design.

Among some other nifty and usable stuff are A/c charging points above every seat, and bright spot reading lights integrated with the luggage rack. In fact the luggage rack itself seems leagues ahead offering a transparent and/or mirror view which increases the swankiness quotient greatly. Emergency exits are marked on one of the windows making it highly integrated without any special fuss.

 

The attendants are neatly dressed and from time to time offer the prescribed food for the journey. The food is not exactly sumptuous but not bad either. I do have grouses in the fact that the journey from Chennai to Bangalore does not offer great tasting food and it can be done better. Another grouse is that the attendants converse in Hindi mostly on a South Indian train. With due regards to the national language, its a thought whether they can do better with English, Tamil or Kannada considering the context of the states the train passes through.

 

The ceiling of the compartment feels similar to an airbus or boeing plane and the quality of materials is top notch. Few notable things which add nice touch are the sun glare screens which are easy to use, and the near perfect temperature control which is soothing. In summary, the Shatabdi remains the popular icon of fast, reasonably priced smooth travel for many a set of people drawn from the young and old alike. The new changes effected only enhance the image of the service making it a great option to use instead of even an economy flight! With growing needs, the train is now equipped to add on wireless internet, and telephone services to augment what is already available. The railways seems to consider the Shatabdi as one of the important bread earners in their family of trains and is leaving no stone unturned to churn out better ideas as time progresses.

Finally, similar to the famous Harry Potter scene where Harry enters a platform number 9 3/4 th by running into it, to board the Hogwarts Express train, which is a mythical train, the Shatabdi too leaves Chennai from platform 2A (between platforms 2 and 3) though only in this case, this is a real platform that actually exists half way down in between platforms 2 and 3!

  

 

(Some images are copyrighted to their respective owners – they are reproduced here from the original web locations, and due credits are given to these)

Our infrastucture experts lag by a decade – KH road flyover mess solved

Ask a small kid and he would have given the solution. Ask an old man and his wiseness would have manifested as a solution. It took the Bengaluru infrastructure experts a few years to come up with a solution to the (stupid) KH Road flyover. What is wrong with the flyover many people might ask. Well I would ask – what is exactly right?

  • Its the world’s only flyover with a signal light at the center

  • Its the world’s only flyover where a cop sits managing traffic at this signal light

  • Its the world’s only flyover which is mismanaged to such an extent that it has made proper roads crooked just because it exists

  • Its the world’s only flyover (perhaps) which can crush an entire road beneath it and the people on it to death in seconds

  • Its the world’s only flyover where the span of the column can be considered so huge to cause regular traffic jams

  • Its perhaps the world’s only flyover that looks like an X in shape!

Yes we are talking about the great Double Road flyover. Finally atleast the mess it has created has been solved to some extent by keeping things the way they must be. See for yourself: (picture courtesy TOI)

Now for some questions on this way of traffic flow:

  • Isn’t one of this enough either mission road to residency road or double road to richmond road, why both ways the traffic now needs to flow on the flyover?

  • Is that design not silly ?

  • The bigger question is whether this flyover is now required at all once you see the traffic flow 🙂 ?

  • If they do decide next to remove this flyover, will it solve any issues if one ways are created accordingly?

  • Must a small stretch of road between richmond circle and VGP junction on double road make life hell ?

  • Will we never see architectural marvels in flyover making at all ?

  • What about the maintenance of such a flyover, what will be its state after say 10 years more ? Would you travel on it or under it ?

The issue is not with building flyovers. The issue is with people designing them and the limited scope of the needs of such a construction, that these people have in their narrow mind. Money flow aside.  Any guesses what the next great architectural marvel would be ? How about an underpass on both sides of this flyover ? Or better still a metro train running under this flyover ? Infrastructure planning is an art. Experience must speak by itself, without even a single question asked. You want an example, see for yourself the better part of Bengaluru infrastucture:

Image courtesy: BMIC – NICE

Nostalgic trip to central Bangalore – part one

Central Bengaluru always is a misquoted terminology. No one knows what part of Bengaluru is central and what part is not. Some say its Majestic, some say its MG Road, some even say its Koramangala! So much for the skewed understanding. Nevertheless, I had to purchase an ultraviolet lamp, for medical reasons, and the only place it was available in Bengaluru was on BVK Iyengar road. So I set off on a rather unusual trip to a place I was walking around a lot about a decade and a half ago during my studies, and early career, when there were no MALLS around for fun and frolicking!

It was a rather hot afternoon, and I decided to go by bus. A decade of car driving had not only brought me loads of knee pain, but also made me totally dependent on the automobile and its services at all times, even to the nearby road. So this time bus it was to be. Boarded a rather rusty rickety BMTC blue bus and set off on my journey from Koramangala to Majestic only to halt two stops away for a good amount of time. It was noon and the driver jumped off the bus and went away with two empty bottles to fetch drinking water from a nearby temple. For the next ten minutes the same bus (171) cloned itself thrice and I missed all those simply because I had already paid for a ticket on this bus. The reason the bus would not move is because the driver feared that he would not meet the collection target for that journey. Don’t you think the transportation tracking has bettered itself over these years, that even drivers are now talking of collection targets? One can only sympathize with them on this fact. If commuters were to get five buses of the same route, one after the other, where must these drivers go to meet these targets? I can’t board all five buses at one time can I ? But this also spells progressive urbanization doesn’t it?

After a few arguments, and explaining to the driver not to waste our time, the rickety box started moving at snail’s speed. The hot sun was really killing everyone and without breeze it was like sitting inside a furnace. A decade of car driving seemed to have removed the notion of a bus from my mind. The best part though was the ticket cost – Rs.10 for about 10 kms. In these days of recession, this is awesome! Not to forget to mention you get entertainment on the way too. A guy sat next to me, and was all to himself. I just enquired about a couple of buses since I was doubtful where they were heading. That’s when I noticed the stench. Our man had boozed in broad daylight. But his answers were perfect, and he was still steady. People were toiling hard outside the IT industry as well.

 

I kept to myself and away from the stink when I noticed this young eunuch (more girlish) get into the bus from the rear, with a water pot. When she (for simplicity sake, i ll take the she route, now lets not debate whether ‘its’ not a ‘he’) saw that the bus was more or less empty, she was running from one seat to another, looking back and forth and giving that odd ‘Do you want something’ notorious smile. People were not pissed off either and let her do what she was good at – giving stares. Quite obviously her’s was a ticketless travel and the conductor dare not question that! Somewhere half way though she got down and the bus slowly reached my destination – a traffic signal after the actual bus stop – Mysore Bank.

 

For my ill luck the signal had gone green, and I had to do some stunts to jump off the moving bus. The last time I had tried anything like this was when I was in my first year engineering degree, where buses also overtook people walking. Now the situation was quite opposite. Both of them were lethargic, so it was a relatively easy job to get out. Enter BVK Iyengar Road – the familiar Abhinay theatre, the familiar KG Road, the traffic – the streaming people, the beggars and vendors on the footpath – everything was pretty much the same. The atmosphere of old Bengaluru was unfolding in front of my eyes. And I turned nostalgic almost instantaneously. Its never about a bus journey, its about the memories that follow such a journey.

 

I walked the entire stretch of this road, and turned left at some point into a smaller lane to reach a shop that I had to go to. My decade old car driving manners had also instilled in me a sense of expecting hi-fi things and the disappointment showed on my face. I must have tuned my mind to central Bengaluru before entering the place. The street I was on could barely accommodate three individuals standing next to each other. In other words, this was the width of the lane. And were there three individuals? Heck No! There were three hundred – a hundred individuals walking furiously, a hundred vehicles mazing their way in and out, and another hundred parked wherever there was a perception of space. There were shops everywhere selling everything electrical (for those who dont know, BVK Iyengar road, is for electrical stuff, just as much as SP Road is for electronics) and the shop dimensions were anywhere between 5ft x 5ft to 10ft x 15ft if nothing bigger – only smaller though.

 

This post will be continued …

 

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Nostalgic trip to central Bangalore – part two

I had written an earlier post describing a short journey into Bengaluru Central. I continue that here. As I walked all along the really small lane, I could not help noticing that even in the din, there was silence, even in the dust there was life, even in the dinginess, there was space. For a moment, I looked up skywards, and found storey over storey of buildings. There were scores of pigeons living in harmony with the people doing business here.

The shop I went to was a small place. But business was brisk. There was a large portrait of the shop owners father who was no more and all business was transacted under him literally 🙂 I waited for 15 minutes after which my product was ready. Meanwhile a worker in that locality (or perhaps I must call him ragpicker) came over to the shop and begged for something to eat. I expected the shopkeeper to pay him a few coins and ask him to go away, but what touched me was instead that he gave the ragpicker a bun to eat. This was a daily routine. In a way is this not equivalent to sharing profits like our huge IT organizations do? Well maybe not exactly but its somewhere there.

As I started walking back to other shops, I could not help noticing scores of schoolchildren alight from a school van after their half a day of school was over. Sincerely I am dead against having school on Saturdays. I’ve enjoyed nearly ten years of weekend holidays in my life and I wish every school kid was also given this option. I searched high and dry for some juice or flavoured milk, but the summer heat did not permit me to find one so easily. So at the signal light I jumped on to a bus taking me to the main bus stand. Unfortunately since the conductor had closed the ticketing for that journey, he was unable to give me a ticket. And I was the rule violator of ticketless travel for the day. I jumped off the bus, before an inspector could catch hold of me.

Even before I could think, there was an air conditioned volvo welcoming me into its plush seats. Unable to bear the harsh heat, I just succumbed to the luxury. The return journey took me almost one hour with the bus twisting and turning at every possible junction. Finally the bus stopped about a kilometre away from my house and I found what I wanted – sugarcane juice. Frankly this tastes much more better and refreshing than even tender coconut and these days they also serve it in plastic cups for neatness. Six bucks a glass sounded like pre 1995 era, and I blissfully gulped down a glass of sugarcane. I still had to reach my house for which I decided to take another bus.

For a walk time of ten minutes, the bus seemed to take eternity to reach the same place. A couple who were college students were busy sharing their love for each other on the vestibule bus in full public glare, oblivious of the imminent audience. For the first time without argument, the conductor gave me a ticket in actuals. As I got down from the bus, the long hours spent in central Bengaluru were etched in my mind for sometime to come. Little did I realize I would have to traverse the same trajectory a week later only to bring back more old Bengaluru feelings within my mind!

Indian Railways First AC – a major difference and a pleasure to travel

With the BIAL being situated very far away for most people, traveling to nearby cities increasingly is using train as the mode of transport. Compared to yesteryears, these days Railways has done some serious upgradation to the type of services that are provided on the trains. I found out about this when I had a chance to travel to Chennai city by the First AC coach.

Erstwhile the only real perceiveable difference, other than the fact that there was AC, was that the seats seemed to have a leather covering in First AC which was not present in Second AC. From outside, the compartments look pretty much the same:

Inside too, one could not tell the difference between these two classes of travel

(Second AC) (First AC)

But after sometime, Railways upgraded the FIRST AC to be more cushiony and more decent in looks, the cabin itself looking more airy as well. The roof moulds were also done up from the inside and more neater upholstery was put into place which gave that well shaven look.

But my journey this time, was extremely comfortable due to better seating arrangements on the coach. The seats themselves were much wider than before, enabling most of us to sleep very comfortably. Not only that for people with kids, like me, one could easily put another small kid next to us on these coaches, which we could not easily do in other classes of travel. The cabin itself was done up with the rather old and dated “Incredible India” slogan with a lone tiger peeping out of the poster. Contrast this with the actual situation in Sariska National Park and Sunderbans, where the tiger numbers are dwindling day by day and you would know how incredible India really is.

Back to the topic, the general look and feel of the First AC had vastly improved by now.

Curtains were looking rather dull in colour, but solved the purpose more than necessary. Also there were wardrobes in two passenger coupes (now that sounds like a hotel room). Also there was a large mirror with its own lighting, 12V sockets for using laptops and other tech gizmos of today. All switches were of very good quality and there was nifty little luggage racks all over the place to stash away your luggage. The berth itself was extra large, with two rounds of bedding/bedsheets with one high quality rug to keep you warm in the AC if required. There were also reading lamps towards the headrest which was a good feature. Yeah, they were always there, but this time they worked!

There was also a netted pouch to keep important things like the mobile, purse etc away while sleeping tight. Also the bottle holders were present at necessary places to stack bottles of water for use at night.

The only technical advancement I really found (other than the 12v power socket) was a panel that indicated which of the four toilets were occupied or full. This is a very good feature in my opinion, and one would not want to waste time waiting at the toilet unnecessarily. The toilets themselves had tissue paper rolls and plenty of water (I am kind of ashamed to say that in other classes of travel the paper rolls arent there!, but that is the irony of this country).

Also there is a morning wake up call in once train reaches the destination in case you have overslept in the comfort 🙂 This is again a welcome feature. Perhaps a newspaper and some snacks would complete the story well. The Railways is contemplating providing either wired or Wifi net access and I should think to believe that its perhaps already there in some trains by now. This in my opinion is a giant step ahead for our country. The simple reason is that due to sheer necessity, this feature is NOT available in other countries, which is pathetic. The economies of scale permit India to implement such a thing with ease.

Finally the total ticket value was around Rs.700 (about 16$) which is much lesser than any airfare and the time wasted going to the airport is more than covered by this train journey. Kudos to the railways for constant improvements and I wish them good luck to improve facilities at a much faster rate from now and not take 50 more years to bring in advancements. One grouse though that I had was that I had to carry umpteen bags from platform 4 to platform 1 in Bangalore city station, via an overbridge without any trolley or escalators. Thanks to Porter – Raj (the illegal reign of porters) we always end up paying 150 to 200 bucks to the porter for something that we might ourselves do when we are in the pink of our health. Shame on you Railways for not upgrading platforms and station facilities. The only commendable part is that I did notice an Airtel Buggy (an electric vehicle provided by a local mobile operator) to ferry around handicapped people. And since the definition of handicapped does not include people who have small kids, this lot of people cant use the buggy even on paying a nominal charge. Common Airtel you cant be so mean!

The next time you travel by train, dont forget to check out the First AC, you would have a pleasant sleep I promise!

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Hotel booking in India – the online angle

India has progressed a long way in harnessing the internet for all purchase related processes, be it a flight ticket, or home appliance or of late even hotel bookings. Hotel bookings were mostly restricted to filling up the required details online, and waiting endlessly for someone to either call you or mail you regarding your booking. This could be an agent or well, the hotel management itself in some cases where the hotel was well known.

There were many anomalies in this kind of scheme. One for instance is that I sent an email via the form on the internet only to receive no reply after – well about – 5 years now!! Another instance is that I got a response from the hotel after about a month, which was of no use practically for me since I had exhausted the travel date for my trip. Atleast this was bearable to some extent but there was one more case where I began receiving spam for the query I sent which made it a bit intolerable.

From those days, hotel booking has steadily progressed to be associated with branded websites who advertise services like hotel bookings, airline bookings, taxi bookings, etc on all media both print and television and even on the net on partner sites. There are a few sites that I would like to highlight for their services (of which I have already used some of them and found it extremely satisfactory)

 

www.Ezeego1.com

 

Ezeego1 is a website that is fairly simple to use (but I don’t think it is web 2.0 enabled as yet – which means more of page refreses than normally required) and gives me all the data I need to see neatly arranged on one single page. I can see the hotels, the photos of hotels, prices with and without taxes and even sort by popularity or price, etc. The site even provides me with a price slider which I can slide to knock off hotels out of my budget range.

This is a unique thing which I liked a lot. Try it out yourself! The photos of each hotel pop up in another window but what I did not like is that in the current age of digital cameras of 7MP and more, I still get to see photos which are dumb and thumbnail sized not giving me the true picture of what I can expect when I land at the hotel. Shame on such photography! The rest is rather straightforward – add hotel to cart, confirm cart, pay and off you go on your holiday equipped with an online confirmation!

Ezeego also has a chat option along with toll free telephone and email customer care.

 

www.travelguru.com

 

Travelguru is somewhat similar to Ezeego, but with some changes. First they are web 2.0 enabled which means I don’t divert away from the hotel booking search results page even if I want to say see some photos of a particular hotel or its rates or features. Everything refreshes then and there only in that part of the page. I am impressed! It’s just awesome to use web 2.0 technology! Travelguru also allows me to pay at the hotel which is an internet first that I have personally noted.

Travelguru has toll free telephone and email customer care.

www.cleartrip.com

Cleartrip is yet another hotel booking service of a different kind. Firstly all results are displayed much like in other sites, with prices of rooms with and without taxes neatly explained. What I also liked about this listing is that next to the hotel name, is a thumbnail photograph of the hotel, with relevant icons showing its available facilities (such as swimming pool, gym, etc). Upon clicking the thumbnail, there is an in browser page pop, using web 2.0 again, which shows some real good quality photos which presents more or less an actual picture of the hotel that is to be booked by you. With these photos, I am more or less confident of what I can expect at the actual hotel. You wont be probably disappointed.

The rest is the same, add to cart, present your details and make a payment. Cleartrip has among other things a toll free phone and email customer care.

 

www.hotelscombined.com

 

HotelsCombined is a multipartner hotel booking network which caters both national and international too. Their objective is simple; they search for a hotel in your city using their multipartner tie up to find the best deals for you. Since this is based on querying multiple hotel booking partners, you may most likely be diverted to the relevant website while you book a hotel offered by them. In that case you must remember to contact only the partner site in case of issues/queries and not Hotelscombined itself. I don’t really know if I would prefer something like this, since it sounds a bit complex for me to reach many other people.

The photos of the hotels themselves are picked from partner sites, so you may not expect the best photos that show you what you get at the hotel really. Sometimes I ve even found that the photos are just thumbnails only. The room cost does not include taxes and the taxes are shown as either at actuals, or zero or sometimes as ‘unknown’!! The partner website though has all room price details, etc with their own contact numbers to ensure you can do the booking of your choice easily from anywhere even outside of India.

It’s to be noted that Hotelscombined does not offer a direct toll free number to contact them for reasons beyond my understanding. While the local sites would go well with domestic customers, HotelsCombined would do a good job if you are looking at a hotel in another country/city from your current location and would provide more than enough details on such listings.

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GPS based chaffeured cabs to the Bengaluru International Airport

Its about a month or two since the BIAL started off operations, and we have a handful of cab services that now ferry people up and down to and from the aiport. Of these two are appointed by the BIAL as official cab providers – Meru cabs (080 – 4422 4422) and Easy cabs (both seem to be from mumbai).

Both these providers have sourced Mahindra Logan cars from M & M in large quantities and I strongly believe this is the right option as the car is very spacious which is the most required thing for a weary traveller commuting miles together and for hours together. With a big boot, it only adds more value to use this car than perhaps any other car!

Add to this that these are chaffeured by drivers who wear proper uniform and are properly trained to behave with (weary) travelers and that the cars themselves have GPS so that they can be tracked for their subsequent assignments or in general on their whereabouts, and this makes the proposition of using these services pretty hassle free and safe. I heard that these cars have the option of automatically messaging the control room and getting deactivated if the drivers hoodwink customers in any way. I want my readers to confirm this though!

While these services are more point to point, there are two other services that are multipoint to airport on a sharing basis that costs a person just Rs.300/- onwards making that an even better proposition, barring the fact that the safety may be at question. Airlift and Zoom airport express services are two providers working on the sharing model and while the former operates innova cars, the latter uses tata winger cars for commutes.

For more details check the websites! And enjoy your drive to BIAL!

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Vayu Vajra – the new face of volvo travel to the Bengaluru International Airport

By now you would have read about BMTC commissioning new volvo buses to take people from the new Bengaluru International airport to their homes and the other way round. I actually got a chance to have a look at one of these on my way back home. On perceptions this is more or less similar to the ones already ferrying people around the city, except for the luggage space in the front. This bus is a 30 seater with seating at back while all luggages are in the front of the bus. The only grouse is whether the buses would be able to handle luggage enough for 30 people at any point even considering each person may end up carrying atleast 2 suitcases (one big and one small).

New Volvo Vajra buses with luggage space in the front of the bus

My initial impressions is one of surprise since I think for 30 people this bus is gonna be very congested for the luggage section. The only succour though would be that the bus is airconditioned and people can feel good sitting and traveling in it compared to say a cab or even an auto. BMTC has started this initiative in the right earnest and one only hopes they add more to this fleet of Vayu Vajra’s traversing the city!

For more detailed information on Vayu Vajra volvo prices and routes, click here

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The Bengaluru International Airport, music to my ears!

Today i was glancing through the Deccan Herald newspaper, which quotes thus regarding the BIAL.

For the HAL Airport, the shift will be abrupt. The curtains will fall right after 8 pm on March 29, the deadline set for all landings to cease there. “All flights after 20.00 hours will land at Devanahalli

and

Despite demands to retain the HAL Airport at least for domestic flights, the new airport’s operationalisation would mean an end to the old aerodrome. It will be an absolute shutdown for HAL airport, and an absolute opening for the Bengaluru International Airport

For a tortured soul living in Koramangala, for the past 25 years of which the last 20 years have seen a spurt in the amount of flights nothing can be better than this news. Its like soothing a baby with sugar in the mouth or by singing a lullaby to a stressed out soul like me! Atleast 30 flights a day at a span of every half hour and a gazillion international flights wrecking my sleep daily upto 1am and a restart at 6am, my sleep was reduced to just 5 hours a day. Thanks to BIAL the tables are now reversed. While I would get my share of sleep peacefully its the travellers who would lose their sleep perenially travelling up and down to the new Airport !

The BIAL unvieled its new logo which is extremely synonymous with old Bengaluru – the garden city. Analysts of this new logo also noted that the new logo cautiously stays away from the wrecked IT image of Bengaluru.

So then what exactly does the airport look like as of now? You bet it looks awesome already and is awaiting to cater to the first set of travelers by March end! Good job BIAL!

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