Bus no 15B arrived at the railway station bus stand. It was around 6 in the morning. I had to struggle to communicate in Tamil + Hindi + English to finally reach that bus stand from railway platform. My personal trip was to Koyambedu(Practiced almost two days to get the name right!). I reached Koyambedu in just 4 Rs! Being from Bangalore, a 4 Rs journey from first stop to the last stop was something amusing. As I had heard, I could feel the humidity in the air bringing out the salt water in my body when I reached the hotel. To our surprise, the auto guy who dropped us from the bus stand to the hotel was from karnataka and I was able to strike conversation in Kannada that helped us reach the right hotel.
It seemed that it had rained the previous day and the area was not looking that clean to my eyes. Somehow managed to have breakfast in a local hotel, that almost resembled a village side hotel in Bangalore. Best part - the people at hotel were so kind, that all I had to do was to shake my head with right gesture :-)
Though it was a short duration trip, I had to visit T Nagar to visit my friend. A place famous for shopping in Chennai. Some shops there resembled the Bazaars in Bangalore Majestic. So, I got convinced after an auto guy told me that the bus frequency is very low to T nagar from that place. After around 15-20 min journey in the auto, the place was reached. And guess what! the auto charge is Rs 100!! I couldn't even argue as I knew very little Tamil but gave him a clean shining Ghandhi currency. It looked like its the same story everywhere with the auto guys.
The window in my hotel room(second hotel) at T.nagar was overlooking at a railway station. And to my surprise, the local trains would cross that station almost every 5 min! By then, I could imagine why the auto rickshaws were so costly. Trains carry most of the commuters in Chennai leaving few people to travel on roads. Thats the main reason, the road traffic in Chennai is lot better than that of Bangalore. One more unique I observed in Chennai traffic is that the traffic rules. People travel against in one ways, always a race between the drivers & the pedestrians and interestingly no traffic signal or police at a junction where four roads meet! With all these happening on roads, people still manage to get through the traffic. Amazing skill indeed!
Nothing much but had to start my return journey to Bangalore. I had tough time finding a hotel near the private bus terminus while returning but managed with a road side plain dosa and a tea.
When I returned back home, I could sense a need to have better transport system in Bangalore. Though BMTC over here is considered to be top in India, the roads or the people(politicians/citizens) are not helping the transport facility here. The metro project has begun in Bangalore but will it really improve the transport system here, nobody knows! Another significant finding was the kind of vehicles on road. I think Bangalore has too many vehicles (especially cars) on the roads. Its not only the government that should bring in a change but we being responsible bangaloreans can do something for betterment our city. Hope so.
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