OK. I know I have spent three months in Surat and no news about the place. So in an attempt to answer this, here goes the first of many posts on the topic.
People used to exorbitant rates for auto rickshaws will love this place. I used to pay 30 rupees in Bangalore to travel distances as short as a km. Here I travelled 12 kms from my residence to the railway station paying only Rs 12.How? Read on.
Running on CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), these auto drivers charge you at around 3 rupees a km. It gets better. Tell him you want to travel to a place with “share” system and it goes down to Re 1 a km. It basically works that the auto driver will load “any number” of people moving in the same direction into the rickshaw. All paying at re 1 per km. Usually, they take up to 5 persons in the rick (one person sitting on either side of the driver and three at the back) it works out for the drivers too. However, if you are in a penny pinching mood you can load as many people as you are comfortable with. At one point of time 7 of us have squeezed into a rick. The cops are all too happy to look in the other direction as long as they get their cut. However, come the end of the month and then the share system drops to only three people in the rickshaw as the cops are out with their fine books.
One must be warned though. Auto drivers seldom have their eyes on the road. No. They aren’t looking at the pretty young thing making out on the side of the road with her boyfriend; (more about this in my next post) they are looking for possible customers.
City buses are specimens. In three months here I haven’t seen a single one. But my friend tells me I should be thanking my lucky stars. He had the “experience” of travelling on one. He recalled it as having spit, pan stains etc all over and worth of being preserved as a specimen of the “I don’t give a shit about anybody else” policy. His experience also included an elderly gentleman taking off his shirt to dry it on the bus window as he was sweating so much. Considering that he wasn’t born in the generation of deodorant users, none of us have had the guts to attempt a bus ride again.
With a bus system nearly non existent, the auto rickshaws are crawling all over the place. With disco lights, loud Hindi / gujarati music blaring, etc they come in all hues and colours. But you have to be on your guard. If they realize that you have no idea of the fares or the distance, instances of charging 150 rupees for a 10 to 15 km journey are aplenty. So make sure they don’t take you for a ride in ways other than you intended.
2 comments:
"an elderly gentleman taking off his shirt to dry it on the bus window as he was sweating so much" lol..... Finally we have a way to make Himesh Reshammiya take off his cap! :)
Yup and what you saw is common in many places such as Ludhiana and Hyderabad, and who knows how many more!
He he. It may be common in lots of places, but it isn't the same in all places. So, the post.
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