I apologise upfront for the bad pun in the title. I have a propensity for such puns, and thought it best to get it out of the way in the title itself. Also, I promise this will be the only Amit-ism* in the entire article.

Almost every Indian city has a form of public transport that gets romanticised and gets written about in various travel guides as a must-do thing. Calcutta has its trams and hand-pulled rickshaws (until not too long ago). Bombay has its crowded local trains. Chennai has its auto-rickshaws, where economists are still trying to figure out how the pricing model works. Delhi has the BMWs that belong to some minister’s son. But Bangalore has none of that. No trams, no hand-pulled rickshaws, or cycle rickshaws even. No local trains, unless you are talking to clever college students who have worked out that if they know their train timings well, they can do City-KR Puram much faster by a train heading to Tamil Nadu than by any other means. And for free, too! Of course, eerie looking cement pylons that have replaced the rain trees in Bangalore threaten to bring in a Metro train revolution, but I will not believe it until I actually see a train run on one of those knives-and-forks arrangements.

But those travel-writer hacks do not know everything, do they? Bangalore’s public transport bus service is one of its best kept secrets (keeping a public service secret kind of defeats the purpose, but what to do?)  BMTC (There are some who still prefer to call it BTS, but that brings to mind images of fiery red cuboids of death and so I will stick to calling it BMTC.) It is only of late that BMTC is trying to let people know that they exist, and that people should be using their buses. Today, the 6^th of July is the 6^th edition of ‘Bus Day’, a once-a-month initiative where people are goaded to travel in the comfort of the numerous Volvo buses that BMTC operates.

For most people, it is these Volvo buses that define Bangalore’s bus services. Especially the ones who cannot read Kannada, they become selectively blind to all buses that do not have a scrolling digital marquee of names ITPL, Electronic City, Koramangala, etc on their number-boards. They do not know what they are missing out on. In Bangalore, given its ever-temperate weather, sitting in an AC bus with tinted windows can never be the optimal way to take in the sights, smells and sounds of the city.

So here’s a simple 2-step plan for all of them (it will work just as well for the others, the ones who already know Bangalore well too). Do it on a lazy weekend, you will enjoy it –

Step 1 – Find out if you stay within Bangalore city as defined by BMTC (well, BTS actually). Here’s how you do it – walk to the nearest bus stop from wherever you are staying. (If you do not have a bus stop less than 500 meters from where you stay, you are definitely outside Bangalore city limits, you can skip to Step 2 directly). Once there, wait for an hour and observe all the buses that pass by. If you spot any bus numbered less than or equal to 200 (buses with any prefix, say K, MBS, TR, etc, are disqualified), then congratulations, you are inside city limits. If all the buses are numbered 210 and above, you are in what the BMTC calls the mofussil. Don’t get too disheartened, it is not all that bad.

Step 2 – If you found yourself to be inside the city in Step 1, just get into any bus and ask for ‘last stop’. You will either end up at one of BMTC’s hubs (Majestic, Market, Shivajinagar) or you won’t. In case of the former, just catch any bus that is numbered less than 200 (except 129 and 150 – those are hub-to-hub). Otherwise, walk around, eat a Masala Dosa at a Darshini, have a strong coffee at another, and either get back to the bus stop you disembarked at, or any other bus stop that you spot nearby. Repeat the process until you want to call it a day.

If you found yourself outside the city in Step 1, just be more careful that your first step takes you to one of the hubs. If you have lots of time, it doesn’t really matter, but I would not want you to dismiss Bangalore as an agrarian economy after ending up at Hesaraghatta, or Budigere, so it is better you try to reach either of Majestic, Market or Shivajinagar.

I’m sure the wise ones among you might have noticed that this 2-step process makes no mention of completing the loop by getting back home. It is intentional. By the end of your bus-hopping day, if you are resourceful enough, you would have figured out how to.

I am sure you can do something on these lines in every big city in India. I have done it in Bombay and Madras – they were not as enjoyable as the Bangalore bus-rides were, but there is no better way to ‘learn’ a city. Or surprise a local in conversation. Well, happy bus-hopping!

*A strange lingo practised by people who live North of Hebbal Flyover and South of Kashmir.