Travel

I cannot help smiling, whenever I recollected our travel, in our childhood, from our village home to City of Visakhapatnam, a distance of less than 100 Km. I am talking about 50 years ago when I was a teenager.

We would get up around 4.00 AM and get ready. By 6.00 AM we would be outside the gate to embark upon the journey. We would all get into a bullock cart waiting for us. We would reach the nearest point from where we could get a bus, in about an hour. There was no proper road, but a dusty path made by frequent movement of people and bullock carts.

The bus would be always late from its scheduled time. It would finally come raising lot of dust around and making lot of noise. It would have served way beyond its lifetime and was rickety but who cared! The bus started after everybody boarded. We all could get seats also, as ours was an influential family around that area. It would stop in between whenever anybody looking influential stopped it by raising his hand. At the end of the day, it was a small world, and everybody knew the driver and the bus conductor, who would oblige to requests. In this process we would miss the connecting bus sometimes, leading to delays. We had to change into another bus after travelling for half an hour.

But before that we needed a break in the journey. By the time we got off the first bus, it was breakfast time. We went into the best roadside hotel those days and would have our choice of tiffin like puri, Wada or Masala Dosa followed by strong filter coffee and with that we would be ready for further journey! The condition of the bus would be not very different.  

Finally, we arrived at our destination, the city bus depot, in about 90 minutes. From there we would take a cycle rickshaw to reach home, say by about 1.00 PM. Everybody would be hungry, thirsty and dog tired and rest of the day went in recovery.

Today, by travelling by any decent car, we would cover the same distance in less than 2 hours. The dusty path was replaced by metal road and the multiple modes of travel could be replaced by a car. These contribute to the difference. Certainly, I cannot help laughing when I recollect the travails of our childhood travel through the same route. But still I love the travelling which I had done as a child.