Luxury Coach??

Among the many things that festivals herald, one of them is the total unavailability of rail tickets. In fact one stands a better chance of bagging a supermodel than getting a reservation on a train during festival season. The only exception to whom the above phrase does not apply is Salman Rushdie, who bagged Padma Lakshmi without so much as lifting an eyebrow. Rushdie's achievement has ofcourse given hope to many people whose hairlines are receding faster than the water levels in Chennai's borewells. Youngsters in India these days are finding it increasingly difficult to make a choice between two widely differing popular hairstyles, that of Rushdie or that of President Kalam.

Coming back to the topic, the unavailability of train tickets forces desperate travellers to opt for either the state express buses (if they're really that desperate) or the luxury coaches owned by private operators. The term "luxury" ofcourse is used very loosely here. To be fair though, some of these private operators do run a superb fleet of well maintained, top of the line, long distance buses. But most others operate vehicles that look suspiciously like those rejected by the road transport corporation of Ethiopia. The journey fares though remain the same for both categories, insanely high and ridiculously exorbitant.

And when festival season approaches, the rates are hiked upto twice or thrice the usual fare. This is a strange quirk among these private bus operators. Normally during festivals most shops offer hefty discounts to their customers, epitomizing the spirit of the season. But these luxury coach owners are content to do just the opposite. They fleece the customer to the extent of making a Chennai auto-kaaran look like a salvation army volunteer. The drivers employed on these buses too are almost certainly MTC rejects. Since these long distance buses possess inherently more powerful engines, they have an insanely high speed limit which the drivers don't mind testing on the highways.

Almost all long distance buses have one or two stopovers during their journey, a fact which is capitalised by an increasing number of highway eateries. The least these highway hotels could do is offer decent refreshment for the travel weary passengers. Unfortunately it is a case of rank capitalism run amok here. Despite the exorbitant rates these eateries charge for the refreshments, the quality of the fare is such that it would make a vulture puke its guts out.

With the introduction of air conditioned buses, the private operators have found another way to indulge in daylight robbery. To begin with, the fares are almost doubled for an A/C bus and most often than not due to poor design of the A/C ducts, the vents begin to leak halfway through the journey like an old man suffering from a prostate affliction. Some drivers even switch off the A/C midway through the journey, turning the bus into a Turkish sauna. While travelling by one such bus a few years ago, the driver kept switching the A/C off and on alternately every 30 minutes. For half an hour the bus would feel like a fridge followed by another half hour in which it would reach pressure cooker temperatures. This kept going on throughout the nine hour journey, at the end of which I felt like pasteurized milk.

All these private buses come equipped with a television set, a fact which the operators never fail to indicate in bold typeface on the tickets. Some of them ofcourse keep the tv solely for decorative purposes while most others do play a video or two. The quality(in terms of clarity) of these videos whilst improving with the introduction of DVD players, still leaves much to be desired. The picture is as jerky as an acrobat bouncing on a trampoline. And about the audio.....the less said the better. Suffice to say that it sounds like a 1960's radio set that has spent quality time at the bottom of a swimming pool.

While these luxury coaches do provide a valuable travel option for those who cannot get reservations by rail, they need to do a lot more in terms of increasing the quality of service provided to the passengers. For the rates that they charge this is an absolute must. Unless somebody comes down hard on these private operators for their deficiency in service, they will keep taking passengers for a ride (pun intended)!