Red Bus is neither red nor a Bus !

Red Bus is no Bus, leave alone the colour of the bus being red. It is just a ticket for Omni Bus in India. www.redbus.in is an online bus ticket booking site. I have very pleasant experience with the above site in booking bus tickets.The ticket selling company has tie-ups with 350 bus operators for a total of 4500 routes. The company was started by some software engineers of Bangalore 7 or 8 years back. I hear that the company has just been bought over by ibibo for hundreds of crores. What I liked most with their system is that they have been able to persuade at least a few bus operators to accept mTicket. mTicket is simply an sms message sent to the passenger's mobile phone after the ticket is booked.No print-outs to be taken. No worry about losing the print-out. The mTicket gives all the relevant information such as the name of the vBus service operator, the boarding point, the destination, the ticket price , the departure time, the seat number etc. You can simply show the sms to the conductor of the bus and get in. It is a boon for those passengers who have a computer and a net connection, but no printer to take a print-out. Of course, a copy of the ticket is sent to the e-mail address of the passenger. Those uncomfortable or unfamiliar with online booking, virtual ticket etc. can opt for phone booking and delivery of a conventional paper ticket. Even Sunday home delivery is available in a few cities. Like with any other online ordering, you can use credit card, debit card or internet banking. In addition, cash on delivery mode is available. You are charged Rs.40.- for delivery of the ticket at your door step. If both onward and return journey tickets are booked simultaneously, the payment is Rs.40 for both together, not Rs.40 each. Quite fair. I find the facility to choose the seat on the basis of the pictorial information given on empty seats extremely useful.

Turkey- a slice of my experiences

I had done quite a bit of research on the net prior to my trip to Istanbul. I had even identified an Indian restaurant in Istanbul, since finding a restaurant for vegetarian food is quite a task while travelling anywhere outside India. I had informed myself about how the taxi drivers in Istanbul used a novel method to cheat the tourists. I had noted carefully how Turkish Lira had undergone three changes in the last 5 years. But the real life experiences do not exactly go the way one had prepared oneself for. Well, not all surprises are unpleasant !

Actually, Turkey is well-known for its Mediterranean cuisine. It has plenty of vegetables and fruits in it, besides olive oil. But Mediterranean cuisine is more common in places like Antalya than Istanbul. Nevertheless, I identified a Turkish vegetarian restaurant in Istiklal Caddessi area of Istanbul. I could have gone to the Indian Restaurant Musafir easily. But I was more interested in eating vegetarian food in an authentic Turkish Restaurant. And I did find one small joint after some enquiries in that area. I was not in for disappointment. What the restaurant called Vegetarian Plate had tomato soup, rice( a bit sticky ), brinjhal , some green salad, a loaf of bread and a sweet. Finally Turkish coffee. Very satisfactory evening. While in Antalya, I had it much easier. Every lunch or dinner I had in the hotel had plenty of green salad, cooked vegetables , nuts, fruits etc. Besides, of course delicious Turkish sweets.

But the taxi drivers proved more cunning than what the Internet had informed me. I had read on certain travel websites that the taxi drivers used to cheat the tourists, taking advantage of the similarity in appearances between the 5 lira currency note and the 50 lira one. When the passenger gives the driver a 50 lira note, the latter instead of giving the balance claims that the passenger had given only a 5 lira note and shows a 5 lira note. The 50 lira note very quickly had vanished into the driver's pocket and equally quickly a 5 lira note appears in its place in the driver's hand.The tourists try to argue but finally get tired enough to shell out the taxi fare once more. There are dozens of complaints of this nature in the said travel websites. But what happened to me was something entirely different. Tired after a visit to the museums in the far-away Sultanahmet area of Istanbul, I decided to hire a taxi to reach my hotel which was in the Taksim Square. The driver at the very outset made it clear that he would not be switching on the meter and would be charging 25 Lira since the traffic, according to him, was heavy that day. I agreed and got into the taxi. The driver appeared friendly and even identified me correctly as Indian. He kept chatting about the chaotic traffic in Istanbul; it was another matter that I did not find the traffic in Istanbul half as chaotic as in Mumbai. Finally when the taxi reached Taksim , I paid him the agreed 25 Lira. He got furious and said that what we had agreed was 35 lira. I heard it as 45 lira and asked him " 45? no, we agreed on 25". He replied " I am not asking for 45, but just 35." He was pronouncing 25, 35 and 45 in an identical way. I think that it was deliberate on his part. Then he showed the meter which he earlier had said he had no intention of switching on ; the meter showed 40. I had no choice. Heads or tails, the driver wins. I paid 35 lira and got out red-faced. So, the drivers in Istanbul can beat you in the game of taxi fare whatever be your preparation.

Visiting Kerala while it rains.......

My plan was to visit Aleppey when the world-famous boat race took place. That would have been the 2nd Saturday of August. It is really funny that an unintended error one commits changes the entire plan and one ends up doing some thing other than what one originally wished. But all is well that ends well.

Special Fare Air Tickets

In this case, I ended up skipping Aleppey but visiting Kochi and Aluva. I was to take advantage of the special monsoon air fares of Air India and Jet Airways. When I was booking the ticket online, I typed the departure date as 7th July instead of 7th August. It was a small mistake but it changed my entire tour plan . There was no change of date possible since it was a special-fare ticket. Also, one was not allowed to cancel and the entire money for the ticket would have been lost upon cancellation. Well, that was the string in small print attached to the special monsoon fare. There was no sense in losing so much money just because one wanted to see the boat race at Aleppey. So, I decided to visit Kerala on the wrong date but then there was no need to go to Aleppey any more since there would be no boat race in July. And there was nothing else to see in Aleppey . So I deleted Aleppey happily from the plan but kept Kochi and Aluva as planned. In hindsight, not a bad move.

Kochi Airport

The new airport at Kochi is actually not close to Kochi. It is at Kalamassery and is closer to Aluva. It is the first private sector-built/ private sector -managed Airport in India. Plenty of space ( as on date) and very clean ( very Kerala, I should say). The lady at the pre-paid taxi counter was polite enough to explain to me that though the hotel I was to check in was quite close , I had to pay the minimum taxi fare (Rs.235.-) which would have given me several more Kms of travel if only I had the need.

Stay & Food

I preferred to stay at Aluva rather than at Kochi. It is far cheaper. Since Kochi is not very far, one could travel to Kochi during the day and be back to spend the night at the hotel at Aluva. While the room was comfortable and clean, there was one problem. There was no kitchen in the hotel. The room attendant has to go out and fetch your food at some nearby restaurant. It was a disappointment that in spite of trying different restaurants on different dates, food was uniformly bad. I must hasten to add that I am a vegetarian and so the comment on the quality of food should be taken with a pinch of salt. Who knows, non-vegetarian food might be good at these restaurants. But when I went to Ernakulam ( Kochi-Ernakulam are twin-cities), I compensated for the bad dinners I have been having by eating my lunch at an Udipi restaurant and I thoroughly enjoyed the food.

Aluva

Aluva is a tourist place. There is plenty to see. Well-maintained temples. Elephant farm. Cherai beach. Kaladi Shankaracharya Ashram. It was a pleasant experience to watch all the paintings and read all the Puranic stories on the walls, as one climbed the steps of the Ashram tower.

Kochi

Kochi is the older of the twin-cities and Ernakulam is the more modern one. Kochi palace was under repairs when I visited. I had to be satisfied with taking a walk in the spacious palace grounds. Since it was raining, the cup of hot tea available from the small shop in the vicinity was very welcome.

The Jewish town was a bit of a let-down. I was expecting a lot of Jews moving around. Instead, I found a lot of Muslims (some looking like Arabs) roaming around. I am told that there are very few Jewish families left in that town. Most of the Jews have migrated to Israel over the decades. The Synagogue is still there.

Kochi Marine Drive is an excellent place to spend an evening. One could take a boat ride. The place is ideal for taking long walks.

The Dutch museum is one of the places a tourist is told to visit. One could learn the complete history of the Kochi monarchy. I still remember the excellent Dutch museum in Colombo which I visited five years ago. If I had not remembered it, I would have been more appreciative of this one at Kochi.

Take-aways

I bought plenty of Banana chips, some of them sweetened. I found them least oily and most tasty. After I boarded the flight back to Chennai, I thought that I should have bought some Jack Fruit chips too. It is OK; there is always a next time. I hope that next time I am more careful in typing the correct departure date in the online Air-ticket booking procedure. Oh oh, I almost forgot. I must mention the give-away too, not just the take-away. I had carried an old umbrella with me to Kerala. While returning, I brought a new umbrella. The old umbrella was stolen by a small-time thief when I had kept it on a table in a restaurant for less than two minutes and gone to the wash room. In Kerala, every one is smart. How could the thieves be otherwise ?

Kodai and Yercaud - a personal view of the two Hill Stations

Location

The Kodai hill is nearly 7000' high. One could reach Kodai Road by train and then take a bus to Kodaikanal. There are a number of trains from Chennai to Kodai Road. There are regular flights from Chennai to Madurai. There is even a flight from Bangalore to Madurai. It takes four hours by road from Madurai to Kodaikanal.

Yercaud is situated very close to Salem in Tamil Nadu. The hill is 4500' high. There are several trains from Chennai to Salem. It takes just an hour form Salem to Yercaud. As yet, there are no flights to Salem from anywhere.

Stay and Food

Kodaikanal is a well-developed town. It has numerous Hotels and Restaurants. Hotels suiting different budgets are available. Hotel Carlton and Hotel Kodai International are five-star hotels. There are several medium priced Hotels. Hotel Astoria, Hotel Annapurna, Hotel Bala , Hotel Jaya. Hotel Tamil Nadu etc. have rooms in the price range of Rs. 600- Rs.800.- during off-season months and Rs.900 -Rs.1400 during the season months ( April-June). All these Hotels have good restaurants attached to them.

Yercaud does not have many good Hotels. Hotel Shevaroy is 3-star. Hotels in the normal price range of Rs.600- Rs.800 are very few. Hotel Tamil Nadu is worth mentioning here. But the service in Hotel Tamil Nadu is very poor. Of late, a few cottages have come up in the medium price range; but they do not have restaurants attached to them. There are not many tourists visiting Yercaud. So, not many hotels have come up. It can also be that tourists are not coming to Yercaud since there are not many good hotels. More than the shortage of hotels, the acute shortage of good restaurants would discourage day-time tourists.

Lake

The most important place for sight-seeing in any Hill Station is lake. While Kodai Lake is kept beautiful and the surrounding is clean, Yercaud Lake is an apology for lake. The surrounding is very unclean.

Shopping

A visitor to any Hill Station purchases oils such as Eucalyptus, Lemon Grass, Winter Green, Citriodora, Citronella etc, Aloe Vera Jell or Juice, Spices such as Cardamom and Pepper, Tea and Coffee. Kodai has several shops selling a variety of products and brands. Yercaud has very few shops and they are not even conveniently located.

Quiet and Peace

Yercaud scores over Kodai in this aspect. Kodai is heavily commercialised and one will find very few places where one can take quiet walks. Yercaud has an uncrowded atmosphere since there are very few tourists. If you want comfortable and economical hotel rooms and good food served in your room itself while enjoying the pleasant weather of the hill, then go to Kodai. You will like the shopping experience and lake-side walking too. If you dislike crowds and do not mind walking half a mile to a restaurant from your Hotel for food , then yercaud would not disappoint you.

How to prepare for Overseas Holiday

Travelling overseas gives every one great pleasure. Opportunities of exposure to a new culture, getting to know unusual local customs, tasting exotic food and bringing back scores of digital images that will form staple food for many future conversations with family and friends in the winter evenings are an irresistible temptation. But a lot of preparation is required before one actually undertakes the dream trip. Let us look at it in detail.

1.Choice of destination: This depends not only on one's interests but on the budget as well. You might like to travel to Scandinavia. But if you can not afford the expensive hotel accommodation in Stockholm , you will be forced to consider cheaper alternatives, say Spain or Malaysia or Egypt. Internet gives you more than enough information on the hotel room tariff.

2.Choice of package: There are group tour packages available from major tour operators such as Thomas Cook, Cox & Kings, Orbitz etc. These travel organizations offer individual packages as well. Both the packages have advantages as well as disadvantages. If you want to be in the midst of 'birds of the same feather' , then group tour is your cup of tea. But you should not mind the conflicting interests of the various members of the group. You might like to spend more time in a museum. But the majority might like to hang out in a theme park. A disgruntled minority might keep complaining about the insufficient time given for shopping. Individual packages do not have this problem. But you are on your own and every small detail is not meticulously taken care of, on your behalf. Another alternative is to do all the arrangements on one's own , either through the Internet or using your phone.

3.Choosing the Airline: When you do not go through any tour operator, you have the additional task of having to choose a good Airline. Almost all the Airlines offer a certain number of seats at concessional price. This could come with some strings attached, such as minimum or maximum number of days of stay, period of validity of ticket etc. But these conditions do not hurt the holiday-travellers. It is better to choose the Airline of the country one is travelling to. There are better chances of flying directly to the destination through such airlines . They will be cheaper too .

4.Applying for Visa: While the Citizens of the U.S. and some other countries are lucky to be exempted from Visa formalities by many destination countries, people who do not enjoy such exemption should act in time. Normally, besides an Application, Passport, Air Ticket, Hotel vouchers etc. must be submitted to the Consulate of the destination country. Citizens of developing countries have more headaches. They have to submit even a copy of their Bank Statement for the earlier 6 months to prove their financial well-being. While Consulates such as German Consulate are very efficient and give you the Visa in 24 hours , many Consulates take 3 to 7 days. Consulates of the former Communist Countries of Eastern Europe are much slower in issuing Visas. After Schengen Visa has been introduced, it is not necessary to apply separately to individual Consulates of Western European countries if your journey takes you to more than one country. Schengen Visa is valid for 14 countries and it is enough if you apply to the Consulate of the first country you visit.

5.Travel Insurance: It is advisable to buy travel insurance. In fact, Schengen Visa makes submission of Travel Insurance a pre-requisite to issue of Visa. Allianz, AIG and Lombard are some of the reputed insurance companies. There are suitable policies depending on the number of days of travel and age of the insured. All of them cover Hospitalisation, obviously. But some of them cover, in addition, loss of documents, travel delay, baggage loss , baggage delay etc.

6.Hotel Booking: There are various categories of hotels suiting different budgets. The travel agents may be more interested in promoting costlier hotels. You should put your foot down and stick to your specifications of overnight room rates. If you are booking through the Net, include Guesthouses in your search. You will get a wider choice and cheaper offers.

7.Packing: Remember the weight/dimension limits specified by the Airlines. Keep in mind the risk of losing some of the baggage and arrange to have part of the clothes packed in the cabin bags.

Low-cost Air Travel in India. Will the party last?

It was 32 years ago that I first saw the inside of an Aircraft, as a passenger. Those were the times when very few travelled by air and 95% of them on expense account. Snacks served were bad without exceptions and the crew used to be impolite. After all, the crew was in the employment of a major Public Sector organization and so considered the impolite behaviour as their privilege.

Even after allowing for the fact that 32 years mean a very long period, air-travel in India has changed substantially. The private Airline companies have brought about a remarkable change. The fares have dipped; even the premium Airlines keep a few tickets for selling at low fares. The staff is polite enough. Complaints are addressed with acceptable efficiency. Every time I board a low-cost Airline flight , I see faces, among the passengers, whose body language shows very clearly that they are first-time air travellers; their enthusiasm is very visible. Their children run from one end to another. The elders open their lunch boxes soon after the take-off since there is literally no 'free-lunch' in low-cost flights. Many of them prefer to address the air-hostesses as 'Sister' in the best tradition of small town India. They are mostly converts from train passengers. There are more families than individual travellers among them. It makes one really feel good to notice unassailable proof of more and more people sharing in the fruits of the economic growth.

There is one factor which can spoil the party. It is the relentless climbe of the crude oil prices in the international market. Being heavily dependent on imported oil, India will bear the brunt. And one reads in the newspapers every few weeks about a fresh increase in the price of aviation fuel. The airlines will pass on the cost to the passengers and in course of time, the value-for-money kind of passengers who form the bulk of low-cost air traffic will say ' Enough is enough' and switch back to the good old Indian Railways. By then, the now-first-time-flight- passengers will have collected enough boarding passes and so will have satisfied their earlier curiosity about air travel. They will carry with them enough stories about air travel, to tell their co-passengers in the train for time-pass.

Taxi Drivers in Prague

When I was in Prague last April, I took a taxi to my hotel from the Railway station. It was a long drive to my Botel ( a hotel on a boat). The driver , a man in his fifties was talkative and friendly. Without even prodding, he kept giving his comments on the state of his country. He was absolutely disgusted with the way his country was being run. He said that his rented accommodation which used to cost him 400 Czech Crowns a month, in 1989, was now making him poorer by 10000 CK every month. And the accommodation was not palatial, but just fit for pigs. He thought that the switch from the communist system to a capitalistic one had not benefited people like him. In a sarcastic comment, he said that earlier the communists looted him and now the capitalists were doing the same job.

I had the opportunity of travelling by another taxi the very next day. This driver was younger and was in his early thirties. Unlike the older one on the first day( who was more comfortable with German language) , this man spoke better English . This young chap had totally different views on the new system. He said that freedom was more important than bread and so the freedom which he was enjoying under the new dispensation was far better with all its financial insecurities and mounting inflation , compared to the job security and stable prices which were taken for granted under the communist regime, but with individual freedom bartered away.

Two taxi drivers, but two diametrically opposite opinions. Perhaps, it is a divide on the basis of age. May be, even on the basis of formal education.

Pizza, my Saviour during my European Holiday!

When I was travelling in Europe recently, I ate Pizza every day. Being a vegetarian is not so easy in Europe. Though every major city has Indian restaurants, it is a very expensive proposition to eat daily in the Indian restaurants. I settled for Italian Restaurants. A large -sized vegetarian Pizza and a mug of beer kept me going for the entire day. Though I am an Asian, Chinese restaurants do not appeal to me in spite of the fact that they have vegetarian dishes in their menu. Somehow, I find the taste unacceptable. I must be one of the few who do not prefer Chinese food. When I eat Pizza, I get the feeling that I am eating Indian food. Be it in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Prague, Vienna or Salzburg, Pizza kept the culinary company for me. For this, I thank the Italians.

Goethe Institute, Prien and my teacher Herr Ochs

Flash back to 1975. I studied German language in Goethe Institute at Prien am Chiemsee, a beautiful resort town near Munich, the Bavarian Capital during Dec.1975-Jan.1976. Mr.Ochs(Ox) , a bearded Austrian bachelor was my teacher. At that time, I was 29 years old and Mr.Ochs was about 45 years old. He had mastery over the English language too. This made his teaching more effective. While teaching us German, he spoke to us on a wide variety of subjects. He was very international in his outlook. He even took us to restaurants in nearby villages and introduced us to authentic German cuisine, though as a vegetarian I chose to forgo opportunities of getting to taste much of the German food. Herr Ochs had become an indispensable part of our daily life at the end of the two months.

Cut to 2007 April. I was making a visit to Germany on my way to the United States. I took a train to Prien from Munich. Prien had changed a lot in the intervening 32 years. More shops. More crowded Railway station. I did not remember the way from the Railway station to the Goethe Institute any more. With some guidance from the passers-by, I managed to locate the institute. It was heart-breaking to learn that the Goethe Institute had closed down its Prien branch. All that remained was the building, uninhabited . And Herr Ochs who had retired long ago, was no more. Some thing sank in me. The old care-taker of the by-now empty Goethe Institute building was nostalgic and sad. His wife, he said, had worked in the kitchen of the institute for several years. She is no more. He lives alone. I said with a sigh , " Every thing seems to have changed in Prien". He shook his shoulders and countered, " Has not the entire world changed upside down?". True. To lighten the atmosphere, I said," But the German beer has not changed. It still schmeckt gut." The care-taker laughed and the heaviness on my heart eased a bit.

Have you any time wondered why we all suffer from pangs of nostalgia? Why that wistfulness? Why that tinge of regret for times gone by? As if a part of us has vanished for ever, never never to return? Is it because it reminds us of passage of precious time? Our mortality? That we are living on borrowed time ? Will we ever come to terms with the truth that we are living in a time-defined ephemeral world?