First bus ride

Today I made it onto my first bus ride in India from Mumbai to Pune. At first I arrived at the address on my ticket and was wondering where the bus was. I asked the auto driver and he said in hindi, "Over there!" Clearly there wasn't any bus, but there was no use arguing either so I walked down the street and realized that the bus company office was there. I asked the guy at the counter when the bus to Pune would arrive because it was already 8:45. He said 11. I showed him my ticket to say that I wanted to be on the 8:45 bus not the 11am one. He said ok ok one minute and made a phone call, presumably to the bus driver. I asked again when will the bus arrive because he didn't give any indication of telling me after hanging up. He said 10-15 minutes so I went to get a snack for the ride and sure enough when I came back the bus had magically appeared and there were even people on the bus already! I'm not sure where they came from but so long as we were going to Pune it seemed fine.

My pickup was pretty different compared to the others that followed. To pick more people up, the bus would drive a little slower every once in a while and the other guy in the front of the bus who seemed to be collecting tickets would open the door and shout "Pune, Pune!" Sometimes that was met by people running along side and hopping on the bus in which case the bus would drive ever so slightly slower to allow them to get on but never reach a complete stop. Other times no one wanted to get on and we would speed up again. The only time we didn't pick up people was when we were on the highway or windy passages in the hills (which were beautiful but I was sitting on the wrong side of the bus to take photos). I'll know to sit on the left side next time.

When we got close to Pune I tried to ask if I could be dropped at Pune station and that didn't seem to be a problem until all of a sudden everyone on the bus was told to get out...again at the side of the road. Apparently there weren't enough people to warrant the whole bus going all the way to the station so the company paid for autos to take us the rest of the way there. That was almost another 30 minutes. Then I had to take one more auto to get to my final destination. Each auto driver always asked for 20rs extra. It seemed like a "foreigners tax" but I'm not sure.

Anyways after all that I got to have a delicious lunch with an MIT friend and his family and figured out my housing situation before heading off to a meeting. After that and a much needed nap, I visited the nearby mall for dinner.

One other highlight of the day was driving a motorcycle for the first time!! :)

All in all a very productive day. Till next time!