It all started when we decided to go to Hyderabad for the Oct 2nd long weekend. After much research and analysis on various modes of transport we decided that going by a Volvo bus was probaby the best option. Next step was to identify the Travels to book on. After another round of analysis and consultation with the folks in Hyderabad, we zeroed upon Kesinini Travels as the most convenient option. Here 'convenient' meant that we could board in Madivala(Point 1: In my opinion if you run a travels and dont have a Madivala boarding option then thats a sure shot way to failure :) ) and get down at a walkable distance from our destination. Being a long weekend we decided to book tickets well in advance and fortunately this Travels had an online booking option(Point 2: If you want to do some business in Bangalore and dont have an 'online' option, then beware... :-)). The website said booking opens 30 days in advance. We planned to leave on 1st Oct night, so right on the morning of 1st September I made an attempt at booking. No luck. I did not persue it further. And tried on 2nd then 3rd then 4th September. Apparently for the website it was still not 30 days in advance(Would really like to meet the person who wrote the code for the site. Another fellow IT Guy :)). Anyway an SOS went out to the folks in Hyderabad and they made a visit to the agent office and he was able to book the ticket without any hassles. So it was probably just a internal conspiracy and not a code issue :). So on 1st Oct we reached our sacred boarding point well in time and to our surprise the bus was 15 min early. That was a good sign I thought. Maybe we would reach earlier... How wrong I was...
The bus left Madivala promptly at 7.15 and we were the only people in the bus. My understanding was that it was coming from Indiranagar and would go to Majestic for further pickups and then leave the city. Wrong again... We were just starting our Bangalore Darshan....
From Madivala we took a big round through HSR Layout and Silk Board and ended up in BTM Layout. From there we went to Jayanagar, JP Nagar and then on to Basavangudi, Lalbagh, Kalasipalayam Majestic, Richmond Road, MG Road, Ulsoor, Old Madras Road and finally.... you wont believe it.. Indiranagar, with the bus only 25% full. Here everyone else boarded(Smart People). Here From there again we retraced our route to Cantonement, Mekhri Circle, and Hebbal before finally hitting the Hyderabad Highway.The time was 10.30PM. A full 3 hrs after we boarded. Those who are familiar with Bangalore would now realise that we had done a nice big round of Bangalore City. We went through roads I had never gone before, saw places I had never seen before(Remember: I have been in Bangalore for 6 years and have gone around a lot :)). Only consolation was that it was in a comfortable Volvo bus.
That was about the Bangalore Darshan we went through as part of the Hyderabad Trip... So what about the trip itself? Well, that ended up being even more eventful. So have to leave all that for the next post.... :)
