Horrific experience!!!. Review on Tips on Traveling in Buses

JOURNEY BY BUS---THE 6-WHEELED TORPEDO!!!

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Before I begin penning down my views on the wonderful journey that I had recently,I must reveal the fact to you that the title is strictly inspired from an article on autorickshaw(the four wheeled torpedo) by one of the most valued members of MS.com and he is none other than ''psyxx''.

We all know how engineering college students prepone/postpone their schedules as per their convenience so I was leaving for home for no reason...may be nostalgia!!!

I live in a small town called Keonjhar(famous for iron-ore and coal mines) in Orissa and my college is situated in the capital city of Orissa i.e.Bhubaneswar(an upcoming hi-tech city).

Me,being from a conservative family and to add to it, the only girl child in the family,my parents were always apprehensive about my travelling home alone but this time around the situation demanded that I go home all by myself otherwise generally my parents or my elder brother came to pick me up from the hostel.I had to take a lot of pain assurig my dad that I would reach safe at home and gave him word that I would not travel by a night bus(I don't know whats bad about night buses-but for the time being I had to respect my father's principles).

As per my father's proposed agenda about my trip home,I was supposed to be ready by 9am in the morning.....Anyways a hectic day was at hand.

Did all the necessary packing i.e.stuffed in all the dirty clothes of the month to be washed at home,a little essentials for ablutions,of course my novel and 2 notebooks that were supposedly the assignment copies(one mine and the other my classmate's from where I would copy down the pending assignments into my notebook).To do all this I had to keep awake till 1:00am the previous night.

Good morning!Here comes the happie day beginning at 8:30am by my watch.''Goshh!!where the hell is my darn alarm clock gone??'' was the first sentence that I howled when I came by my wrist watch.[''Insincerity thy name is mine''...]The last bus was to leave from the stand at 9:30am and it would take an hour for me to bathe(well,different bodies have different calculations of timings) indicating quite an impossibility to catch the bus on time.

So the first and the most judicious thing to do at that moment was to switch off my cell phone if only I had to save my back from the continuous naggings from home.After having done with the ablutions I left the hostel at 10:00am.I had absolutely no idea what should be done next but I guess common sense struck my senses to get down at the bus stand and make all the necessary enquiries.Reached safely at 10:30am.Wow!!to my surprise the last bus was to leave the bus station at 11:15am(hehe...)There were no bounds to the measure of my happiness only to realise within seconds that I had to return my friend's lab record before going home and her house was around 20 mins away from the bus-stand WITHOUT traffic.At first I begged the bus conductor to hang on beyond his schedule by just 15 mins.Then pleaded him...came down on my feet...had to worship him...but in vain.When sorrows come,they come in battalions and unfortunately no angels in disguise come down to help...kalyug may be..

Anyways all I could manage to do was to take a ticket for the night bus that leaves Bbsr last so that I would get down at Kjr around 5am n could just take an auto to home without having dad n mom disturbed.So booked a ticket for 9:30pm and went to my friend to return her lab record.After doing that I was left with nothing to do so set out on window shopping.Kept hunting in all the possible shops for stuff and ended up spending 800/- for nothing at all [temptations kill you know!!].Had lunch at a restaurant n then back to the window shopping errand.

Reached at the bus-stand on time n got myself safely packed in the bus.Hold on,the journey has just begun!The highway was cool to travel at night.Even though I got a seat on the wheel,it was not a botheration until the bus reached the JK road.I had to figure out if I was actually sitting on a camel or galloping on a horse or a bus.With the bus speeding up on the ruined road,to add to it my scanty weight,I had to be vigilant with eyes wide open to guard my head from banging on the luggage carrier on top.The window kept sliding open each time there was a gigantic jerk and that almost took my life out of me cuz if the window opened completely n there was another gigantic jerk I would be straight out of the bus without the door being opened for me.

To help the window stay ajar,the conductor tied a rope on it which had a long dangling end falling on my lap.Well,the dangling was okiee with me as long as the window remained closed but just when I was trying to catch some sleep why did it have to start acting like a snake when the bus jerked?Huff!it got the hell scared out of me.I hope someone in the road transport corporation is reading this so that he/she would attach seat-belts to all the seats in buses.

Magnificient was the co-passenger sitting beside who kept cribbing about the lacunae behind the leadership qualities of the people of Orissa.Surprisingly,he was an Oriya and I am an Oriya as well.So that served little bit of timepass quarrelling,arguing,conflicting with the man who was so hell bent on despising his race and I would die no less hard to defend the same.Worst to his fate was when he dozed off on me.All I did was woke him up and told him,''Irresponsible people like you can only manage to disparage one's race and do nothing about doing away with the loopholes.Please wake up and sit straight''.I know I was rude but thats because he had got me enough annoyed.Be courteous to the passengers but not when they get on your nerves,specially if you are a woman.Well,if no company around,SMSing at mid-night to friends is fun...hehe but for that you needa have the network on your route!!

Fortunately it did not take much time for the smooth roads to come,but just six hours.Another two hours and I would be safe and sound at my destination-Keonjhar.So I could not afford to let anyone take away those two hours of a sound sleep early morning after struggling the whole night with windows sliding open,jerks of horses galloping,ropes acting like snakes and co-passengers biting my head off !!

Got down at 5:30 am,hired an auto and while sneaking into the house after mom opened the door,my cell-phone had to ring at its loudest volume to wake up dad as well.When my dad gets angry everything lies beyond imagination so I cant really explain how the situation was..all I remember is my dad was saying something veryyy loudly and as I was in an inebriated state and ''sleeplessness'' being the alcohol,fell flat on the bed only to wake up in the afternoon for lunch.