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By Rajkamal Rao
Go back to India Live!
In this section:
Bleeped Out Hollywood Programs
Train Tracking Real Time
Banking Anywhere
Cash Recharge for Mobile Phones
Long Distance Bus Availability
Pest Control
Bleeped Out Hollywood Programs
The average Bollywood movie or TV serial is full of racy and suggestive content. Returning children generally don't get into TV serials, so they are fine. But Bollywood movies continue to push the envelope and may be inappropriate for children.
There are plenty of Hollywood movies on your TV dial and luckily, these are heavily censored. All bad words are completely bleeped out and close captioning (which is standard) also shows a series of **** for these words.
We watched Basic Instinct last week and noted that there were so many scenes that were cut from it that its director would have sued a US distributor for interfering with his artistic rights!
We have now enjoyed great Hollywood movies with our 10 year old without having to reach for the remote to fast forward through uncomfortable scenes and language.
Train Tracking Real Time
Indian Railways information technology is now so good that you can track current status of your train - right down to its exact position.
But they messed up the user interface. They require you to know the train number before proceeding (thank God that they didn't need a Gazetted Officer's signature).
Go back to India Live!
In this section:
Bleeped Out Hollywood Programs
Train Tracking Real Time
Banking Anywhere
Cash Recharge for Mobile Phones
Long Distance Bus Availability
Pest Control
Bleeped Out Hollywood Programs
The average Bollywood movie or TV serial is full of racy and suggestive content. Returning children generally don't get into TV serials, so they are fine. But Bollywood movies continue to push the envelope and may be inappropriate for children.
There are plenty of Hollywood movies on your TV dial and luckily, these are heavily censored. All bad words are completely bleeped out and close captioning (which is standard) also shows a series of **** for these words.
We watched Basic Instinct last week and noted that there were so many scenes that were cut from it that its director would have sued a US distributor for interfering with his artistic rights!
We have now enjoyed great Hollywood movies with our 10 year old without having to reach for the remote to fast forward through uncomfortable scenes and language.
Train Tracking Real Time
Indian Railways information technology is now so good that you can track current status of your train - right down to its exact position.
But they messed up the user interface. They require you to know the train number before proceeding (thank God that they didn't need a Gazetted Officer's signature).
- If you know the train number, go to http://www.trainenquiry.com/ and key it in. Like in flight tracking, you must enter the departure date. The exact position of your train is displayed. Try it for say train no.12650 - from Hazrat Nizamuddin to Bangalore - it's fun!
asdfag - If you don't know the train number, go to http://www.cleartrip.com/, select train reservations and choose a departure date in the immediate future which coincides with the day your train left. If your train left on a Sunday, choose an immediate future Sunday. You need to do this because trains don't always run each day and train numbers can vary depending upon the departure day. Cleartrip will display a list of trains and train numbers on the next page.
Now, go back to Step 1.
By the way, here's an interesting link for all of you train buffs - a slide show of the 10 longest train routes in the country. The longest scheduled run is by the Vivek Express, which takes 82.5 hours to cover a distance of 4,286 kms between Dibrugarh and Kanyakumari. There are no showers on the train, so God alone help those (or rather the neighbors of those) who travel from end to end!
Banking Anywhere
If you have a check leaf and a photo ID, you can generally withdraw cash at any branch of your bank - up to INR 50,000.
Suppose you forgot to take your ATM card on a trip, or you lost it enroute. Because most banks maintain customer profiles through a screen called "Know Your Customer", a teller at any bank branch will honor your check provided you can prove that you are who you say you are.
We withdrew cash in Manali, Himachal Pradesh at a SBI branch although our home branch was in Bangalore.
Cash Recharge for Mobile Phones
As we have noted elsewhere, the cash recharge process for pre-paid mobile phones cannot be improved. Period.
There are so many stores and retail outlets that offer cash recharge services that it is simply mind boggling. In dense parts of Bangalore, there may be more than 10 mobile cash recharge outlets per square kilometer.
The process is so easy and often times, the only words you tell the clerk are, "Recharge for Airtel Prepaid". The clerk hands you a basic Nokia phone (it's always a Nokia phone) in to which you key your number - the number whose prepaid balance you want to increase. The clerk adds the amount next to the number (say, INR 249) and sends an SMS to Airtel.
You will get an SMS on your phone that your balance has increased - even before you have received change for your cash from the store clerk.
There are plenty of other ways to recharge - including on the service provider's website or your bank's website. Again, the transaction takes just a few clicks.
Most prepaid plans allow you to share funds across voice and data plans. If you make it a habit to recharge your phone at regular intervals, you will do just fine.
Long Distance Bus Availability
The number of long distance buses is so large that for those that can endure travel by road, travel has become a breeze. State buses operate extremely generous schedules (both reach and frequency) with many buses actually going nearly empty. When booking a ticket for a relative to travel to Goa from Bangalore, I counted 8 (eight) KSRTC Volvo buses all spaced within a few minutes of each other. KSRTC has now introduced a luxury coach called Flybus - an Intercity service from Bangalore International Airport to Mysore. Click here for the KSRTC Volvo long distance route map.
There are so many private operators that one never needs to worry about not having to obtain a seat on a bus. Vijayanand Road Lines, a company claiming to be the country's largest private fleet operator recently introduced a service from Bangalore to Jodhpur, a distance of nearly 2,000 kms. Buses can now be booked online directly at the bus company's website or at travel consolidators such as Redbus, Makemytrip, Cleartrip and Goibibo.
Pricing is relatively inexpensive - about INR 2 per km - for travel on an Air Conditioned Volvo Multi Axle coach. Prices drop steeply for regular, non-A/C coach buses to about less than INR 1 per km - although travel on such coaches is not recommended for long distances.
Our trip log to Kolhapur, Maharashtra, May 2013
For all of you long-distance bus addicts, here's a report on a recent trip we took to Kolhapur. As always, we booked easily online at the KSRTC website. At the time of booking, the pick up point (where we are supposed to board the bus) defaulted to the central bus station. I wanted to change this to Navrang Park, a location close to our home. This too was no issue at all. I simply logged back into my reservation and changed the location.
About an hour before scheduled departure, I got an SMS from KSRTC giving me the license plate of the bus. This is valuable information when you are getting on a bus at a location different from the bus station (at the bus station, you can always ask people where your bus is). So many buses pass Navrang Park during the peak evening hours that having this extra information is handy.
Our Volvo multi-axle bus arrived about 30 minutes late, at 9:00 PM, at Navrang Park. The bus was gleaming and shining to boot. The conductor verified our mobile e-tickets (the SMS that came out at the time of booking) and the Photo ID of the person whose mobile had the e-ticket confirmation. Technically, he is supposed to verify the IDs of all in your party - we were four in ours - but this is rarely done. So, you could potentially swap one of your party members with another person rather than going through the hassle of canceling and re-booking - although this is not legally allowed.
All of our bags went into the huge storage area below. Our seat numbers were written on the bags in chalk and the door was locked shut. We climbed in to the air conditioned cool of the bus and took our assigned seats. We found bottled water and blankets already in place, so we slowly settled in.
About 90 minutes later, the bus stopped at a nice rest area at Dobbspet, a few kilometers before Tumkur. These nice vegetarian restaurants are typically open from 6 AM through midnight - and unlike at city locations, you can order whatever you want all day. If you are craving for a breakfast item such as Idlies at 11 PM, your wish will be fulfilled - unlike at city restaurants which manipulate their menus in such a way that only high-end and expensive items alone are served after 8 PM.
The bus left about 30 minutes later after the conductor verified that everyone who got off had returned. And even before the bus hit the highway, the conductor slowly made his way into the first two seats of the bus and began settling in to get some rest. On long-distance buses, the crew is made up of a driver and a conductor (who also is licensed to drive). The conductor gets paid INR 75 extra one way - that is, INR 150 round trip - for also assuming responsibilities around selling tickets and verifying passengers.
With everyone drifting off into a nice sleep, our driver labored ahead alone, all on his own. Most Indian highways are toll roads - and much like the annoying Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, all traffic grinds to a halt to pay tolls for using that particular section of roadway. Our driver had to stop at all of these toll stops and manage the cash/receipts. He told me that a full round trip to Kolhapur costs INR 3,996 in tolls alone - assuming that tolls are bought on a "return basis". If you were to buy tolls on a one-way basis only, the tolls cost even more. Even state road transport corporation buses are not exempt from paying the full retail price of tolls - a welcome change in a country which practices crony capitalism of amazing proportions. Digressing a bit, there are 53 types of discounts offered to passengers on Indian Railways - based on your status - and these are entitlements, which mean that if you qualify for a discount, you get it. India's road economy fares much better - there are no discounts on the KSRTC Airavat at all since everyone pays full price.
At 2:45 AM, the bus stopped a few hundred yards in front of a lonely toll stop. There were other truck drivers parked off by the median, drivers too tired to slog on for the night, and sleeping on their cramped bunk beds (benches, really) in the warm cabins. This is India, where truck drivers continue to brave weather extremes in their cabs unlike their long-distance bus counterparts who increasingly drive comfortable air-conditioned coaches.
A few of us got off and looked around for a vacant spot to relieve ourselves. This included a couple of elderly women on the bus who were escorted by their husbands to remote corners of the several bushes that dotted the toll plaza. If the women had any fears of snakes or other wild creatures, they let them rest for they had more pressing items to think about and act upon.
Our driver was clearly tired - he had been driving non-stop for about 6 hours - as I could make out from his blood-shot eyes. He lit up a cigarette and explained to me how, he by sheer stroke of good luck, got into a cleaner's role with KSRTC 28 years earlier. His father was a cobbler and he only had schooling until 10th grade. He proudly told me that he makes INR 35,000 a month - even in modern India, sharing with strangers how much you earn is common place - and that he put his son through engineering college. He said that his conductor partner makes less because he has fewer years of service. At this moment, the conductor, who had had a good long rest, washed his face with a fresh bottle of water and climbed into the driver's cockpit to adjust seat controls to his liking. He would be taking us to Kolhapur and driving through the night.
The same driver-conductor pair shuttles on the same route, Bangalore to Kolhapur, month after month. Mondays are days off for this pair. A Tuesday night departure from Bangalore brings them to Kolhapur at 7:00 AM on Wednesday morning. They are entitled to stay in an air-conditioned hotel room in Kolhapur, although, the driver told me that they manage to sleep in the bus's huge baggage hold but claim the hotel room expense anyway. [I am not sure how this is done - presumably, a hotel gives out a false voucher for a larger amount after charging the pair a smaller amount for use of shower facilities in the morning]. Their return trip starts at 7 PM on Wednesday and they bring back the bus to the Bangalore depot by 7 AM on Thursday. At this point they go home and don't report for work until Friday evening (i.e. they get a 36 hour break) when the cycle starts. On average, each pair definitely completes two round trips to Kolhapur each week, with some weeks being three round trips.
As the bus rolled off into the night, the tired driver #1 hit the first two seats and was practically snoring in just a few minutes. I had been awake for much of this action but I could see that I could no longer do so. And I slept soundly only to wake up not far from Kolhapur.
Truckers and long-distance bus drivers the world over, along with pilots and ship crew, have always had my admiration. These fellows do what they do so that the rest of us can, well, rest.
Pest Control
Pest control services are pretty modern and compare with those in the west. We signed up with a national provider to pay INR 3,500 to service our 2,360 SFT four bedroom apartment four times a year.
Service has been extremely prompt and the result has been flawless. The office calls us the day before a scheduled appointment, confirms the date and time and sends us an SMS on the day of the appointment as a reminder. Technicians call us before arriving (largely to find out our location) and are rarely late. Service takes about 30 minutes.
Of course, we moved into our apartment new; so there were no pest problems prior. I am not sure how effective this provider is with older homes that may already have a history of pest activity. The technician told me that they will need to cleanse such homes once or twice, and only then enter into a contract. I don't know the pricing of such an effort but I presume it will be nominal.
Banking Anywhere
If you have a check leaf and a photo ID, you can generally withdraw cash at any branch of your bank - up to INR 50,000.
Suppose you forgot to take your ATM card on a trip, or you lost it enroute. Because most banks maintain customer profiles through a screen called "Know Your Customer", a teller at any bank branch will honor your check provided you can prove that you are who you say you are.
We withdrew cash in Manali, Himachal Pradesh at a SBI branch although our home branch was in Bangalore.
Cash Recharge for Mobile Phones
As we have noted elsewhere, the cash recharge process for pre-paid mobile phones cannot be improved. Period.
There are so many stores and retail outlets that offer cash recharge services that it is simply mind boggling. In dense parts of Bangalore, there may be more than 10 mobile cash recharge outlets per square kilometer.
The process is so easy and often times, the only words you tell the clerk are, "Recharge for Airtel Prepaid". The clerk hands you a basic Nokia phone (it's always a Nokia phone) in to which you key your number - the number whose prepaid balance you want to increase. The clerk adds the amount next to the number (say, INR 249) and sends an SMS to Airtel.
You will get an SMS on your phone that your balance has increased - even before you have received change for your cash from the store clerk.
There are plenty of other ways to recharge - including on the service provider's website or your bank's website. Again, the transaction takes just a few clicks.
Most prepaid plans allow you to share funds across voice and data plans. If you make it a habit to recharge your phone at regular intervals, you will do just fine.
Long Distance Bus Availability
The number of long distance buses is so large that for those that can endure travel by road, travel has become a breeze. State buses operate extremely generous schedules (both reach and frequency) with many buses actually going nearly empty. When booking a ticket for a relative to travel to Goa from Bangalore, I counted 8 (eight) KSRTC Volvo buses all spaced within a few minutes of each other. KSRTC has now introduced a luxury coach called Flybus - an Intercity service from Bangalore International Airport to Mysore. Click here for the KSRTC Volvo long distance route map.
There are so many private operators that one never needs to worry about not having to obtain a seat on a bus. Vijayanand Road Lines, a company claiming to be the country's largest private fleet operator recently introduced a service from Bangalore to Jodhpur, a distance of nearly 2,000 kms. Buses can now be booked online directly at the bus company's website or at travel consolidators such as Redbus, Makemytrip, Cleartrip and Goibibo.
Pricing is relatively inexpensive - about INR 2 per km - for travel on an Air Conditioned Volvo Multi Axle coach. Prices drop steeply for regular, non-A/C coach buses to about less than INR 1 per km - although travel on such coaches is not recommended for long distances.
Our trip log to Kolhapur, Maharashtra, May 2013
For all of you long-distance bus addicts, here's a report on a recent trip we took to Kolhapur. As always, we booked easily online at the KSRTC website. At the time of booking, the pick up point (where we are supposed to board the bus) defaulted to the central bus station. I wanted to change this to Navrang Park, a location close to our home. This too was no issue at all. I simply logged back into my reservation and changed the location.
About an hour before scheduled departure, I got an SMS from KSRTC giving me the license plate of the bus. This is valuable information when you are getting on a bus at a location different from the bus station (at the bus station, you can always ask people where your bus is). So many buses pass Navrang Park during the peak evening hours that having this extra information is handy.
Our Volvo multi-axle bus arrived about 30 minutes late, at 9:00 PM, at Navrang Park. The bus was gleaming and shining to boot. The conductor verified our mobile e-tickets (the SMS that came out at the time of booking) and the Photo ID of the person whose mobile had the e-ticket confirmation. Technically, he is supposed to verify the IDs of all in your party - we were four in ours - but this is rarely done. So, you could potentially swap one of your party members with another person rather than going through the hassle of canceling and re-booking - although this is not legally allowed.
All of our bags went into the huge storage area below. Our seat numbers were written on the bags in chalk and the door was locked shut. We climbed in to the air conditioned cool of the bus and took our assigned seats. We found bottled water and blankets already in place, so we slowly settled in.
About 90 minutes later, the bus stopped at a nice rest area at Dobbspet, a few kilometers before Tumkur. These nice vegetarian restaurants are typically open from 6 AM through midnight - and unlike at city locations, you can order whatever you want all day. If you are craving for a breakfast item such as Idlies at 11 PM, your wish will be fulfilled - unlike at city restaurants which manipulate their menus in such a way that only high-end and expensive items alone are served after 8 PM.
The bus left about 30 minutes later after the conductor verified that everyone who got off had returned. And even before the bus hit the highway, the conductor slowly made his way into the first two seats of the bus and began settling in to get some rest. On long-distance buses, the crew is made up of a driver and a conductor (who also is licensed to drive). The conductor gets paid INR 75 extra one way - that is, INR 150 round trip - for also assuming responsibilities around selling tickets and verifying passengers.
With everyone drifting off into a nice sleep, our driver labored ahead alone, all on his own. Most Indian highways are toll roads - and much like the annoying Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, all traffic grinds to a halt to pay tolls for using that particular section of roadway. Our driver had to stop at all of these toll stops and manage the cash/receipts. He told me that a full round trip to Kolhapur costs INR 3,996 in tolls alone - assuming that tolls are bought on a "return basis". If you were to buy tolls on a one-way basis only, the tolls cost even more. Even state road transport corporation buses are not exempt from paying the full retail price of tolls - a welcome change in a country which practices crony capitalism of amazing proportions. Digressing a bit, there are 53 types of discounts offered to passengers on Indian Railways - based on your status - and these are entitlements, which mean that if you qualify for a discount, you get it. India's road economy fares much better - there are no discounts on the KSRTC Airavat at all since everyone pays full price.
At 2:45 AM, the bus stopped a few hundred yards in front of a lonely toll stop. There were other truck drivers parked off by the median, drivers too tired to slog on for the night, and sleeping on their cramped bunk beds (benches, really) in the warm cabins. This is India, where truck drivers continue to brave weather extremes in their cabs unlike their long-distance bus counterparts who increasingly drive comfortable air-conditioned coaches.
A few of us got off and looked around for a vacant spot to relieve ourselves. This included a couple of elderly women on the bus who were escorted by their husbands to remote corners of the several bushes that dotted the toll plaza. If the women had any fears of snakes or other wild creatures, they let them rest for they had more pressing items to think about and act upon.
Our driver was clearly tired - he had been driving non-stop for about 6 hours - as I could make out from his blood-shot eyes. He lit up a cigarette and explained to me how, he by sheer stroke of good luck, got into a cleaner's role with KSRTC 28 years earlier. His father was a cobbler and he only had schooling until 10th grade. He proudly told me that he makes INR 35,000 a month - even in modern India, sharing with strangers how much you earn is common place - and that he put his son through engineering college. He said that his conductor partner makes less because he has fewer years of service. At this moment, the conductor, who had had a good long rest, washed his face with a fresh bottle of water and climbed into the driver's cockpit to adjust seat controls to his liking. He would be taking us to Kolhapur and driving through the night.
The same driver-conductor pair shuttles on the same route, Bangalore to Kolhapur, month after month. Mondays are days off for this pair. A Tuesday night departure from Bangalore brings them to Kolhapur at 7:00 AM on Wednesday morning. They are entitled to stay in an air-conditioned hotel room in Kolhapur, although, the driver told me that they manage to sleep in the bus's huge baggage hold but claim the hotel room expense anyway. [I am not sure how this is done - presumably, a hotel gives out a false voucher for a larger amount after charging the pair a smaller amount for use of shower facilities in the morning]. Their return trip starts at 7 PM on Wednesday and they bring back the bus to the Bangalore depot by 7 AM on Thursday. At this point they go home and don't report for work until Friday evening (i.e. they get a 36 hour break) when the cycle starts. On average, each pair definitely completes two round trips to Kolhapur each week, with some weeks being three round trips.
As the bus rolled off into the night, the tired driver #1 hit the first two seats and was practically snoring in just a few minutes. I had been awake for much of this action but I could see that I could no longer do so. And I slept soundly only to wake up not far from Kolhapur.
Truckers and long-distance bus drivers the world over, along with pilots and ship crew, have always had my admiration. These fellows do what they do so that the rest of us can, well, rest.
Pest Control
Pest control services are pretty modern and compare with those in the west. We signed up with a national provider to pay INR 3,500 to service our 2,360 SFT four bedroom apartment four times a year.
Service has been extremely prompt and the result has been flawless. The office calls us the day before a scheduled appointment, confirms the date and time and sends us an SMS on the day of the appointment as a reminder. Technicians call us before arriving (largely to find out our location) and are rarely late. Service takes about 30 minutes.
Of course, we moved into our apartment new; so there were no pest problems prior. I am not sure how effective this provider is with older homes that may already have a history of pest activity. The technician told me that they will need to cleanse such homes once or twice, and only then enter into a contract. I don't know the pricing of such an effort but I presume it will be nominal.
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