Missed the bus

By Prajwal Haniya

Yesterday I had a great experience. I learned from my mistake that you need to cross verify your phone number before booking a bus ticket.

I made a digit mistake while adding my phone number while booking the ticket, this caused the driver to call the wrong number several times. Another mistake that I made is that I stood few hundred meters away from the 8th mile signal where the bus usally stops. So, I saw the bus leave without picking me. The bus which I booked the ticket, passed infront of my eyes.

There were several mistakes from the bus agency as well. They didn’t provide the bus details and phone numbers of the person incharge of the bus, instead they gave agency phone numbers. The phone numbers turned out to be useless.

What did I do after I missed the bus?

I called the agency several times until they picked up my call. They did pick up the call after several tries, I did call them around 10:50 PM, but the agency didn’t notify about my phone call to the bus driver, they just assumed everything will be alright. The phone number mistake was a bug which redbus app failed to catch, agency owners failed to catch, and I failed to catch. This was a mistake by all of us.

So, with several phone calls, the Gajamukha bus driver gave me a phone number of Prakash Travels bus, he informed to catch this bus, and then with great many phone calls I got into this bus. But, There were no seats for me. I had to sit on the floor in between two sleeper coaches and reach tumkur toll. I requested the service boy of this bus, to get me into a bus that goes to sagara, he scrolled his netwrok of contact lists and then he gave me a details of another bus which is travelling to sagar, I had only one cabin seat(the seat which is slightly above and behid the driver). However, I got into the bus that is travelling to sagara near tumkur toll gate, I travelled seating till Chitradurga in the same bus, as the bus was travelling via chitraduraga I didn’t have any choices left. In Chitradurga, few sleeper seats at last got emptied. I occupied the emptied seats, which was wet due to faulty bus windows and heavy rainfall.

I reached sagara around 6:50 AM.

I am slightly not in a mood to document this because I had very less sleep. Probably will write it in a better way once I reach Bengaluru.