Hardcore Traveling - Continued

Government Bus Efficiency

This took place while trying to get from Bangalore to Thiruvanamalai.

Booking the bus was surprisingly easy. My sweet-talking rickshaw driver dropped me off in a travel agency, I went in, and a pleasant man booked my government bus ticket online. He showed me the available buses, and even allowed me to choose my seat from a diagram on the screen before he printed out my ticket.

I arrived at the bus station, half an hour before the designated time of departure, to encounter the first difficulty.

While the ticket clearly stated platform no.18, there was no such thing there, I realized after asking 5 different conductors. Only a massive space with buses chaotically, sporadically leaving and coming in, and an obnoxious din.
The other Indian travelers were unfazed - sitting on the ground chatting amiably one moment, and scurrying up to their feet haphazardly the next, avoiding getting run over by a massive bus blithely careening along.

It felt like that part in the first Harry Potter novel where he's supposed to get to platform 2 and a half in the train station, seeing upon arrival, that there's no such thing, only a towering wall.
Finally, after running around frantically, and asking every conductor and passenger where the bus is, I managed to locate it.

Relieved, I went inside and took a seat.

It was almost 30 minutes, 50 minutes after the designated departure time, that the bus finally left, only to travel a meager 4 kilometers for 5 minutes and stop at a different lot, this one almost deserted.

I waited another 30 minutes in the bus, when finally something happened:
A young boy approached the front window of the bus, and started washing and scrubbing it meticulously until it was immaculately clean. This took about 15 minutes (the cleaning was almost pedantic, and stood in sharp contrast to the filth inside the bus). The driver started up the engine, and revved it up for another 10 minutes approximately, creating an extremely loud noise that even my Sennheisers couldn't block out.

Finally, for no apparent reason, the conductor signalled everybody to get out of the bus and board a different one. After boarding the second bus, and waiting for another 20 minutes, the young boy came again and spent ages until every speck of dust and dirt had been washed away from the front window.

After that, all the passengers suddenly got off the bus in tandem, and went to use the bathroom.
Following their boarding the bus again, the driver revved up the engine (once more) to an unbelievably high volume, and the conductor came and signalled everybody, yet again, to board a third bus.

After boarding the bus, our compulsive little cleaner made sure that the front window would be an epitome of sparkly cleanness. The conductor and bus driver took their places, and I heaved an audible sigh of relief - we were on our way.