Buses, Delhi

The Govt run/owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) has been phasing out the old busses and replacing them with thousands of modern ones.
There are also air conditioned (red) busses, which are priced a bit higher (min rs 10 fare, max rs 25), are much less crowded.

The infamous `blueline' busses, which were known for dangerous driving and being responsible for much chaos on the road, are on their way out.
Bus routes are also being rationalised, so as to connect seamlessly with the metro train network.

There has also been a recent addition of hop on- hop off ( or `ho-ho') busses, which are meant for tourists, and run along routes relavant to tourists. They are not too many in number just yet, but should be easy to spot, since theyre coloured purple! I believe they run at 30 mins frequence as of now. Last heard, there were plans to convert these into double decker open top busses, like the london bus concept, with the lower deck being airconditioned and the upper level eing open...

We took local bus 505 from New Delhi Railway Station out to the Qutb Minar, which proved to be very easy, convenient and above all cheap - only 10 rupees each way! You're surrounded by daily life, people commuting to work, and children to school, sellers of food and all sorts of other commodities leaping on and off!

I found it a really good way to get out into the outskirts of the city, and a good way to see the people of Delhi at the same time.

Due to railwayconstructions there was no reasonable connection to Bikaner anymoe. The detour would just take way too long. So we took the bus from the Serai Khale Khan bus adda (station) thanks to the help of UMA SHANKER here on VT! Thanks for the tip!

The first day in India:
Well, I checked out the station immediately after my arrival. I was told it was not possible to get the ticket in advance (when I was there), so we showed up early enough on the day of our planned departure. At the desk we were still told that the bus leaves at 22:00 o`clock and that he, the guy at the desk, could not sell in advance.
Ok, we thought, still used to the Western style of lining up and waiting in trust of the good of human beeing. Well, when the bell hit 22:00 we finally bought our tickets and were looking forward to our "cozy" seats in the bus..................just to find all the people already sitting in the overcrowded bus or still pushing into it without any tickets (most of them)......
Because the Indian style is rushing into the bus as soon as possible, grabbing a seat and buying the ticket ON the bus........ok, we still managed to get a seat, at least half of my butt had a seat for the next 10 hours of night bus ride through the dark.

But since then we adjusted well to the system jumping over kids pushing away the old, the weak and the disabled to get a seat in a darwinistic style - survival of the fittest....

STOP! Of course Im just kidding, but getting a seat can really become an adventure for itself.

According to some tickets in sanskrit which I cant read, the ticket price was 235 Rupees for the 10h ride.

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Buses probably cater for about half or more of Delhi’s commuters. The main bus providers include DTC (Delhi Transport Corp), BlueLine Transport and a few other private bus companies. There is a city bus service which is available at the railway stations to various parts of the city. Busses at night are only available on certain routes.

We were all rather concerned that this was the bus that was going to take us all around India, but fortunately they provided us with a more up-to-date coach for the bigger journeys. I don't think we would have survived a 300-mile journey in this wreck!

Local buses in Delhi are rather chaotic and not very modern. As the taxis were pretty cheap, we moved around by taxi, but I guess taking a local bus to somewhere might be an interesting experience anyway...

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Delhi is now served by thousand of environment friendly CNG (Compact Natural Gas) buses. Some of these buses are wheelchair accessible and are quite clean.

Having complained about the state of the tourist bus, I was jolly glad I wasn't travelling on the local bus when I saw this lorry stop to pick up passenegers on the road between Delhi and Agra.