The Volvo Experience – Again!
Monday, October 23, 2006
Its time to take a break, after a few weeks of strenuous work at office. To be honest, I am not talking about taking a trip to Bahamas or any other beautiful place for a vacation. I have to think of more viable options as of now J . The easiest get away in the current situation is home, sweet home. And it’s a long weekend on account of Diwali, Ed etc.
Getting a ticket is the most challenging task while planning a vacation. Almost all the fellow people go to their hometown even at normal weekends, so consider grabbing a ticket at the last minute! This cumbersome task of procuring ticket at the right time has been granted to me by my roommate who happens to be going to the same city as mine. Well, another trait of mine has earned this decree as I do a bit of early planning.
So, this time also, I started calling up the travel agencies much in advance to get that precious piece of paper which gives the opportunity to get a seat in one of the numerous advanced luxurious buses as they claim to be. Here, I saw the power vested onto them J. The travel agents were more like the bus owners themselves, rejecting all the requests to have a seat at their buses telling the irritating reason that charts have not been ready. If there is a delay the reason would be no seats available!
Finally we got seats in a Volvo. Hoping for a luxurious travel and to reach the destination much earlier, we boarded the bus at the right time. Ignoring a bitter experience last time with the same travel company, we involved in the usual chat and time pass till sleep whisks by. We had the first shock by realizing that the AC is not working. It was just hot air coming out of the ac vents. The helpers in the bus tried in vain to do the so called repair work to give the passengers a reason. And everyone was looking irritated. The funny part was that they distributed blankets which looked like they were doing some kind of routine job as they have to do those irrespective of the prevailing situations.
Finally, they gave up and we had no choice other than to crib about the bus and making remarks. It was pretty hot in the bus and sleeping was out of question. As it was completely covered, there was very little air circulation. Also, there was a stench of sweat which prevented me from getting a slight nap at least. Time passed by and sometime past two in the morning, the bus had some technical problem as it was defined in the driver’s slang. So we found ourselves on the sides of the road having fresh air. The small talks with the fellow passengers revealed that they had similar experiences with the same bus in their past trips. Well, this gave me a slight relief in realizing that I was not the only one affected!
The best part was yet to happen. They saw another bus of the same company coming towards us and everyone was asked to get down from the bus and board the new bus. I recollected the same incident when I took the same bus for my previous trip, a month ago. Surprising enough, the other bus had ac on and was better.
Looks like the attempt to have more comforts are making the travel miserable as we reached our destinations pretty late. This made me decide to try for other buses and take this only as some last option!!!!
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this post is dedicated to ?????
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