ravi says

During the Diwali holidays, I was on the way back too my hometown. I was going home after a long time. I was too delighted with the thoughts of going home .The travel mediums used in the journey is quite interesting.

I had booked the air-ticket for the BANGALORE-KOLKATA journey two months in advance. Incidentally there was no train or connecting flight from Kolkata to my home town Patna that day. The Howrah-Patna is very well connected through the railway and you will find so many trains on general day, but there were none matching our timing on that day. Actually it should have been checked before booking the air-ticket but I think we (my friends too) were in hurry and planned to reach home two days before Diwali. So we booked the train tickets for a town near to Patna and planned to travel from there in best possible medium available there.

I was in the office on the day of travel and left the day early to avoid the Bangalore traffic, which can cause the delay such that even you can miss the flights. I reached the airport on time. One of my friends was there 1 hour before and other was still in the office when I reached. It was just on time that he reached and received some good words from us as my friend ticket was with him. We boarded the flight and in no time we were in Kolkata. There it took more than half of the travel time to book a pre-paid taxi for the Howrah junction. The Kolkata taxi-drivers and taxi are really out of this world. There I realize that I can never learn to drive a four-wheeler in this town. Finally we reached there.

At the junction we looked for the option to travel to the Patna, but we already knew that and were just trying our luck out there. As expected there was none and we had dinner and we boarded the train to Gaya. In the train there was a fight in the next compartment between two uncles for the place of luggage even though there was lot of space to keep the entire luggage. We had a long chat in night before sleeping and we were there on time.

Now the next question arises, how do we travel from here to Patna. We enquired about the local trains but it was after three and half hours. So we decided to enquire about the bus service, the name of the bus is enough to send electric shock through your body. The thoughts of the roads and the crowd will be like nightmare.
As we were in the hurry to reach home so nothing can deter our plans and we book the tickets in the bus. The tickets for all of us were cheaper than taxi fare in the Kolkata even though the distance was at least 15 times more. The seat were not so good and it started in the 15 min. the roads were in very good condition which was beyond my expectation and the crowd was also less for the festive season. The green wheat fields were presenting very good scenery out of the window. It was fast and comfortable journey till the time we reached to the outer part of the city. There was big traffic jam due to the breakdown of a truck in the middle of the road. It took a long time to cover a small distance due to that.

The city has grown a lot during the last few years. It was a long time after which I was in this part of the city as I used to take the train directly to patna and never used to come on this side of the town. What was disturbing in the development was that there was clear lack of the city planning. 80% of the new houses were in the middle of the water logged surroundings and they don’t have the cement plaster on the outside walls. So the colors are missing and it looks like a concrete jungle.

We finally reaches to bus stand and as we are about to enter it, we see an unusual thing. At least 20 auto rickshaw are following the bus to catch the passenger’s first. We finally booked a auto for our place and interestingly the drive gave the controls to a children and he was driving and yelling at the peoples who were not giving the pass. God knows why the horn in the automobiles was invented. The child was only 13 year old and did not had the license so as soon as the city limit came he gave back the control to the other elder driver and after that I thought that he was the better driver.

After using so many mediums of the transport I finally reached home and it was a great. there are lots of stories and things to be shared so i will be updating the blog soon. so keep reading...