Travelling across the world...

Hi,

Are you ready for the trip?

I am not asking for one or two day trekking trip or something of that sort...

I am asking for about travelling across the world for years together...

A couple have travelled for 3 years...

Covered 60,000 miles...

visited 24 countries...

visited 4 continents...

crossed 122 borders...

burnt 3200 gallons of gas...

To get to know more about the vehicle used by them, the route travelled by them, the equipments used by them, check out their website .

Bangalore <-> Ooty on Bike

One of my colleague, Elango, floated his interest to make a bike trip from Bangalore to Ooty. That looked interesting to me, and I have never drove such a long drive on bike, although I had drove almost 25,000 KMs... We are planning to go for this trip on the first weekend of the next year (2008).

I got some time to check about the trip on the net, and found some interesting blog entries...
Let me share the links here.

A Blog entry about their trip…. You must read this one before you make up your mind for such a trip. Are you brave enough?.. really???, tell me after reading this blog entry...
http://bendekaaluooru.blogspot.com/2006/02/to-ooty-on-2-wheels-part-1.html

One more blog entry by ThoughtWorkers
http://skizz.biz/blog/2007/11/27/biking-to-ooty/

Good to see the someone’s trip album before you start, which gives the motivation :)
You need it really….., Because, There are 36 Hairpin curves on the way….
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisstevenson/sets/72157602872876582/

Unreserved Travel in Train

Last week I traveled from Bangalore to Arakkonam for Eid. The train normally leaves Bangalore at 10:45 PM. I had reached the station at 9:30, got the ticket and waited for the train. When the train entered the station, every one fights to enter into the train to get a seat for him. I somehow, got into train and got a seat to sit on the top tier. When I got into train it was around 10:00 PM. Till the last minute crowd keeps entering into the train. Their was 1 or 2 unreserved compartments only and around 20 reserved (Sleeper and A/C coaches).

Only 2 trains are available in the night time, so the reservation gets over 2 or 3 weeks before the journey date. If you decide to travel 1 week before the journey date, you have to travel by unreserved compartment. Check out the first picture, that is not taken anywhere in the middle of the compartment, that was the entrance of the compartment. Crowd keep coming and trying to figure out some place to stand in any of those 2 unreserved compartments.

On each of 4 people seats, 6 or 7 people were sitting, on each of the upper tier, 4 people were sitting, and few people were lying down on the luggage space. One guy was fighting with people to move, so that people can come inside. Few people supported him, few people were against him. The person who got the space to lie down is happily watching the fight and few guys were busy on their mobile...
Just imagine the women travelers on this crowd. They were having big troubles...



Questions to Railway Ministry:
1) When we pay the tax, rather when you detect the tax at source, why don't you provide us the facility to travel?
2) Why can't you analyze the travel frequency and schedule the trains effectively (more trains on friday nights, more unreserved compartments, etc)?
3) Why don't you travel once in unreserved compartment to realize the pain of others?

Anyhow, tips to travel in unreserved compartment:
1) You need to be there in platform before the train arrives the station.
2) To follow the first tip, you need to be their in station 90 minutes before the scheduled time.
30 minutes will be spent to get the unreserved ticket.