This is how it started:
We booked tickets from ABC Travels for Hyd a week before our actual travel date. We were told that there will be a pickup service from the booking counter. On the day of travel when we reached the counter, we were told that we would have to go to some other bus stand as the pickup service has been cancelled. We were also told that the travel service would pay for this and being in a hurry we didn't think twice. However, this was a far fetched thing to believe and rightly so. When we boarded the bus, we found that two of the 3 booked seats didn’t exist at all!!! I was reminded of Platform 'Nine and three quarters' in the Harry Potter series, when the conductor kept on insisting that the seats did exist!!! Probably we could actually find those two seats if we moved swiftly between two seats and shouted EXPECTO SEATOS ;-). Well, we were finally provided two different seats. We sat there expecting the bus to leave at 9PM. It sure was a long wait.
When the bus finally left B’lore at around 11.30PM, we got to know that this particular bus ran in the MUM-HYD route and this was the first trip for the entire crew of the bus on the BLR-HYD route…so they were asking for directions at every junction…Morning 7AM and we were still 130 KMS from HYD…our actual time of arrival was 6AM. 8.15AM and the driver had to stop at a dhaba for breakfast for 15 mins. As expected it took all of 40 mins.
Finally when we arrived at Hyd at 10.30AM, we were supposed to get down at a place called ‘lakdi ka pul’…but due to traffic restrictions in the city, no buses were allowed inside the city after 8AM. So we had to get down at the Imliban bus stand…Took an auto from there which ran out of gas after goin some distance…so we switched autos. The auto#2 took us to some place we had never seen (we never realized this until the driver said that ‘saab Madhapur aa gaya’)…well we had to turn around and reach madhapur crossing tolichowki and touching gachibowli (i.e., we came thru Hi-Tec City, instead of Banjara Hills). Finally we reached at 11.45 at Madhapur and it cost us more than double the usual fare from Imliban to Madhapur.
Instead of the morning breakfast we were just in time for lunch ;-) The others had already arrived. Evening came and the gathering became lively. With 14 of us meeting after so long, it was bound to be a lot of fun. We ordered Pizza's and the famous Hyderabadi Biriyani and the gupshup went on till late night. At 1.30AM someone had a craving for Ice-Cream and Ohri's was the place to go. So off we went at 2AM to have Ice-Cream!!!
Next day was a lazy one with everyone getting up aaram se...lunch was fabulous with a lot of colored breadsticks as part of the starters ;-)
Lunch was followed by a visit to Durgam Cheruvu (Hidden Lake). It's a beautiful water body surrounded by hillocks.
The short trip was almost coming to an end and it was time to go back home. But as our Dear Friend Murphy had to strike again, it happened. Two of our friends who had come from Mumbai got a call that their bus had been cancelled and that they either had an option of a refund or travelling the next day. This was major panic time...frantic searches for available flights, trains and buses to mumbai...getting only 1 ticket on a bus when the requirement was two...and finally goin down to a nearby bus depot to get two tickets that were luckily available. We bid adieu to both of them and heard the next day that they had an uneventful journey apart from the minor inconvenience of travelling for more than 12 hrs in a bus.
Well, our return trip was not too eventful luckily and we got back safely and on time.
This year is certainly goin to be a memorable one considering the number of travel delays and other such things happening.
We booked tickets from ABC Travels for Hyd a week before our actual travel date. We were told that there will be a pickup service from the booking counter. On the day of travel when we reached the counter, we were told that we would have to go to some other bus stand as the pickup service has been cancelled. We were also told that the travel service would pay for this and being in a hurry we didn't think twice. However, this was a far fetched thing to believe and rightly so. When we boarded the bus, we found that two of the 3 booked seats didn’t exist at all!!! I was reminded of Platform 'Nine and three quarters' in the Harry Potter series, when the conductor kept on insisting that the seats did exist!!! Probably we could actually find those two seats if we moved swiftly between two seats and shouted EXPECTO SEATOS ;-). Well, we were finally provided two different seats. We sat there expecting the bus to leave at 9PM. It sure was a long wait.
When the bus finally left B’lore at around 11.30PM, we got to know that this particular bus ran in the MUM-HYD route and this was the first trip for the entire crew of the bus on the BLR-HYD route…so they were asking for directions at every junction…Morning 7AM and we were still 130 KMS from HYD…our actual time of arrival was 6AM. 8.15AM and the driver had to stop at a dhaba for breakfast for 15 mins. As expected it took all of 40 mins.
Finally when we arrived at Hyd at 10.30AM, we were supposed to get down at a place called ‘lakdi ka pul’…but due to traffic restrictions in the city, no buses were allowed inside the city after 8AM. So we had to get down at the Imliban bus stand…Took an auto from there which ran out of gas after goin some distance…so we switched autos. The auto#2 took us to some place we had never seen (we never realized this until the driver said that ‘saab Madhapur aa gaya’)…well we had to turn around and reach madhapur crossing tolichowki and touching gachibowli (i.e., we came thru Hi-Tec City, instead of Banjara Hills). Finally we reached at 11.45 at Madhapur and it cost us more than double the usual fare from Imliban to Madhapur.
Instead of the morning breakfast we were just in time for lunch ;-) The others had already arrived. Evening came and the gathering became lively. With 14 of us meeting after so long, it was bound to be a lot of fun. We ordered Pizza's and the famous Hyderabadi Biriyani and the gupshup went on till late night. At 1.30AM someone had a craving for Ice-Cream and Ohri's was the place to go. So off we went at 2AM to have Ice-Cream!!!
Next day was a lazy one with everyone getting up aaram se...lunch was fabulous with a lot of colored breadsticks as part of the starters ;-)
Lunch was followed by a visit to Durgam Cheruvu (Hidden Lake). It's a beautiful water body surrounded by hillocks.
The short trip was almost coming to an end and it was time to go back home. But as our Dear Friend Murphy had to strike again, it happened. Two of our friends who had come from Mumbai got a call that their bus had been cancelled and that they either had an option of a refund or travelling the next day. This was major panic time...frantic searches for available flights, trains and buses to mumbai...getting only 1 ticket on a bus when the requirement was two...and finally goin down to a nearby bus depot to get two tickets that were luckily available. We bid adieu to both of them and heard the next day that they had an uneventful journey apart from the minor inconvenience of travelling for more than 12 hrs in a bus.
Well, our return trip was not too eventful luckily and we got back safely and on time.
This year is certainly goin to be a memorable one considering the number of travel delays and other such things happening.
Wednesday September 6, 2006 - 11:32pm (IST)
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