On our way to Sikkim

Would anyone have thought, even 10-15 years ago, that it is possible to go to a place as far as Sikkim from Bangalore by bus?
No way, right?
Yet, starting tonight, that's what we intrepid four are doing.
We tried train tickets- the normal way, the Tatkal way and the premium Tatkal way. Unfortunately, none of that worked out. Instead of giving up, we are now splitting our journey into multiple bus rides- Blore to Vijayawada by overnight sleeper bus, spend a day in Vjw. Then Vjw to Bhubaneswar by overnight sitting bus, then spend a day in Bbn (probably recovering from the overnight sitting journey). Then in Bbn we have two options: either take a short train to Siliguri or two more buses, first to Kolkata and then to Siliguri.
We have tried the first for now (tickets are still waitlisted, no confirmations yet), figuring that worse come to worst, we can always book bus tickets after scoping the scene at Bbn.

Booking Indian train tickets, I'm realising, really teach one the meaning of fate, timing, and risk tolerance.


I'm not even going to start with Tatkal, other than to say that we were miserably beat by the system. But let's think about waitlisted tickets for a second.

For instance, if one happens to get a waitlisted ticket, used to be, when I was younger, that one went a bit early to the station and watched one's father stand in various lines trying to get tickets before the charts would be prepared. Nowadays, you can cancel your ticket... But if you leave it too late, you risk losing a significant sum of money in cancellation charges. Or you play a game of chance: if your ticket is still waitlisted by the time of charting, you get nearly your full amount back. If even one happens to be confirmed, you have to then cancel the ticket, which means you forfeit that entire amount for that ticket. If your requested berths happened to be AC 2tier, like ours was, then you are talking something like 3-5k per ticket (depending on the train)

Today, we played for high skates (almost 11k) with the Indian railway system: at the time of chart preparation, we were at WL1-4. And we ended up getting the amount back. Phew!

Good start to the holiday. We are in a bus to Vjw now, enjoying the (slightly dubious) comforts of an upper berth sleeper.


Sikkim, we are coming!

Tatkal

Booking tatkal tickets is like a game in who-can-click-the-fastest.
Yesterday, I was too slow.

Today, I'm geared up and ready. Really hoping it works out and that there are no hidden rules that I have not yet figured out.

16 minutes to go for the window to open online.....

Brain block

Apparently I can only blog when I'm slightly sick, very stressed.

Any of the other times, when I'm trying to make myself write, nothing comes out... it's utter mental constipation. Stress me out a bit, then some diarrhea happens (mental, I mean. Apologies for the various potty-metaphors)

Aaarrggh

Can there be another word in English that is abused more than "disruptive"?

In the startup world, disruptive is used to describe EVERYthing.

Give the poor over-used word a break, people. Why not try something a bit less... well... destructive-sounding?