The Bus is Having a Cup of Chai Somewhere

I just thought a story about waiting for buses wouldn't be very interesting to read.

-- Barbara Ehrenreich

Those of you familiar with the U-Hyd campus will know that it's... pretty far from anything anyone would want to go to.

Thus, I need to find myself an effective method of transport. Mostly because I really, really, really want to see Chak De India before it closes.

When I went into the city last week to purchase my salwars, we took a car. Easy enough, though probably too expensive for everyday use. The day-long trip ended up costing Rs. 700 (I only paid part, thankfully enough).

When I went into Chandra Nagar yesterday to get my shower shoes, I took an auto-rickshaw. It ended up costing Rs. 5 to go out and Rs. 100 to come back, because (first of all) I couldn't find a driver who wanted to take me back for less than Rs. 35, and (second of all) when I arrived back on campus the driver was suddenly incapable of changing a bill. This, of course, I expected.

But I want to go into the city tomorrow (before my schedule gets too full with my classes) and see Chak De India. It has become my single and only goal.

Which means I need to try and learn how to ride a bus.

But there are a few problems. Okay, several problems. The first is that the bus schedule is (how shall we say...) unpredictable. Today I had wanted to testdrive the bus system by making a short trip to a nearby bookstore. So I asked about ten people how to ride the bus, how much I should pay the driver, which buses would get me back to the university, etc., averaged the answers, and headed out to the bus stop.

The bus stop had a sign which clearly indicated that a bus heading towards my featured destination would stop at 2:30 and at 3:15. It also noted several other buses coming in the interim.

I sat at that bus stop for an hour and saw nary a bus go by.

So that's the first problem. (It's not that I hadn't seen the city buses drive through campus before; I had, so they do exist. It's just that none of them seem to adhere to the printed bus schedules.)

The second problem is that I have no idea where any of these theatres are, or which ones are closest to my destination, or what time Chak De even plays. IMDB might be helpful in this situation but it seems to only give information for U.S. theatres. I have found an online list of Hyderabad cinemas, but have no idea, really, where any of them are located in the city.

So, Team Readers (esp. people like Neha or Space Bar or Sashi who have lived in Hyd), how shall I solve this???

My other option is to sit somewhere and ask everyone who walks by, since I have already tried asking the people in the guest house, but... they don't know, since they are guests and thus unfamiliar with the city. ^__^

Or I could just suck it up and send for the car.

Editor's Note: One might ask "why doesn't she find a friend to take her?" Truth be told, she has been fairly vocal about her goal to see SRK on the GIANT FREAKING SCREEN since her arrival. ^__^ The lack of general response from the other people at the guest house, most of whom are very busy with science and physics-related projects, would imply that no one else is interested.