Bus to Work

Finally!! After two weeks of endless postponements, I commuted by bus to work. The story goes like this.

I am big believer of walking to work. For the first two years of my professional life, I walked to work. However, somewhere during that period I had to accept the reality and get myself a bike. Initially for about an year, it was sparsely put to use on working days, I used it mostly on weekends to meet friends and my sister. Now, that was a good three years back.

Over the last three years, I got sucked into picking up my mobike for every and anything. That was when I met Srini, I knew him for about two years in Proteans, but it was only in the last few months that I got to work with him. He is one person who inspired me to commute by bus to work. He does it himself everyday. This inspired me to try the same.

This inspiration was not enough to pull me out of inertia, Sameer(though I never met him), his blog post about Indus (a nice gentleman, whom I met at BCB4) was the trigger. Ever since I was contemplating commuting by bus to work, it finally materialised on Tuesday last and man I am glad I made it.

I figured out that I kept postponing if it was a daily affair, that would be a huge step from the daily comfort. To overcome this mental block, I decided that I will do it twice a week to start with and then see how it goes. The next big question is which days?
Monday and Firday are out of question for obvious reasons. Two days in a row is ruled out as I don't fancy travelling by multiple buses, so that finally left me with Tuesday and Thursday.

Both these days, I took bus to office, and boy what a contrast it was! The first day was joyride, found a bus that left me at BTM just after reaching the bus stop. There was a private service which I took to the HSR BDA junction. Thursday was a two hour wait at the bus stop for the elusive Vajra bus direct to HSR BDA Junction.

There were a few observations I made over the past two trips.

• There is nothing in Bangalore either online or otherwise which gives you an accurate description of routes on which the buses ply. I understand that the traffic is problem in Bangalore, but there is no excuse for not being able to get route information.
• If you want to travel in comfort, better start before eight.
• There are not many buses plying over very long distances(~20km). Most of the buses are medium distance(~10Km). If we have to go from one end of the city to the other, invariably we have to take at least 2-3 buses. Also, the connecting hubs are not many. Again no information available.

Now the Good.

• You get to see many areas which you never noticed when on mobike.
• You get to know precisely which area is which? I now know where difference between BTM Water Tank, Ragi Guda temple stop and so on. Earlier all of them were BTM!

I will keep writing more about my bus experience every week. Keep tuned in.

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