The Manipal journey…

Last weekend I decided to head to my bro’s place in Manipal to spend the weekend with him and my folks. From the outset I felt that the trip was not going to be kind on me. It started off with the bus coming in late. I was traveling by Vishal Travels and they had this weird concept of distinguishing their buses by means of a route alphabets. So there I was at 9PM waiting for my Route ‘G’ bus. After routes ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’, buses started pouring in at random. In came ‘M’ followed by ‘D’ and I was desperately trying to find a sequence in the midst of all this. But finally route ‘G’ arrived to my relief. The human mind is really tough to convince and so is mine. I went up to the conductor and asked if this bus goes to Manipal. And the billion dollar reply was “I DON’T KNOW WHERE IT GOES…ITS JUST ROUTE ‘G’!!!”. I stood staring at him…realising that this was going to be a really long trip! Surprisingly the bus looked pretty neat inside. It had a 2+1 seating arrangement (where there are 2 rows of chairs one of them with 2 chairs and the other with one). I got a single chair for myself and it felt really comfortable. Now the fun begins…

A girl walked into the bus and found an old man sitting in her seat. She politely asked him to check his seat number. It became clear that this guy was in the bus on the basis of an “adjustment” with the conductor. Worse still he had 2 women and 2 very small children with him. Our hero, the conductor, was summoned. And what does he do? He asks the man and his family to get up from their seats and sit somewhere else! This made way for a major heated argument while I was snuggling into my ultra-comfy single chair.

Suddenly the bus stopped near Majestic bus-stand. When I peered outside the window some people started loading the bus with a plethora of material substances which included multiple sacks of flowers and vegetables, cartons which contained alloy wheels for cars, 8 massive truck tyres, umpteen reclining chairs and lots of other stuff which I could not make out in the darkness. I’d just realised that this bus was actually a convertible! They were converting the bus into a cargo transporting truck!

And the porters did not seem to be in any hurry at all. They were taking their own sweet time in loading the goods. Finally it took a bout of sharp rainfall for the incompetent men to speed up the loading process. I was just about to thank the rain gods when this “blessing” turned into a “nightmare”. Through a small crack on the roof of the bus above me a little river started flowing!!! My bag and my shoes were drenched. Not to mention the ultra-comfy chair!

After about an hour we finally started moving to our destination. The road to Mangalore is famous for its striking similarity to the surface of the moon. The “craters” were so beautifully placed that my head kept oscillating from left to right whenever I slept. I managed to slip into my slumber amidst all the chaos on the road. When I woke up in the morning I overheard some people saying that in the middle of the night, one of the tyres had gone flat and they’d spent over an hour trying to fix it. Frankly I did not know whether I should’ve been glad that I slept through the whole episode or ruing the fact that we were already 3 hours behind schedule. The bus reached Mangalore and guess what?? All the cargo was to be unloaded here. This time the porters were even more complacent. They were talking to each other like long lost friends recollecting their experiences. Tempers were rising high inside the bus but “M/S Vishal Travels” was least bothered. After about one-and-half hours they were done with the unloading.

The penultimate nail on the coffin – Another bus from Vishal Travels arrived as we were leaving Mangalore. For reasons known only to the Almighty and the conductor and driver of that bus, they decided that they would not go any further and declared Mangalore as the final stop. A frustrated bunch of passengers from that bus got onto ours and seated themselves on whatever micron of empty space was available. And the final nail? Our bus reached Udupi which is a good 10-20 minutes from Manipal. The ever-friendly conductor called upon all the people who had to get down at Manipal and in his oh-so-sauve demeanour announced that we had to get down here!! Our unfortunate bunch had to hire a cab to finally get us to Manipal.

Contrary to what I’d foreseen, ultimately I did make it to Manipal…but with one extremely sour pair of buttocks and an even sour mood.

Verdict:M/S Vishal Travels — Categorically eliminated from my tour-operators’ list!