In Pictures: From Jaipur to New Delhi by Bus

Wooooright – after spending 3 nights in Jaipur, it was finally time to say good bye to the beautiful Pink City of India.

In order to make the ends meet, we’d be heading back to New Delhi to complete our Golden Triangle tour before flying back to Malaysia from there.

So – the Sindhi Camp bus station is the place where to get off the bus INTO Jaipur so quite logically it is the place where to get ON a bus OUT of it. 😀

Based on the schedule on the white board at the ticket booth, it’s quite UNLIKELY for you to run out of buses actually. It seems like a bus leaves for Delhi every half an hour so there is no way that Jaipur can hold you for long.

But just in case your budget HAS to keep you waiting longer, there’s this air-con room for you to escape the dusty air and scorching sun of Jaipur at least until your much awaited bus turned up to take you away once and for all. LOL.

Of course if you’re a budget traveler like me, the first thing that probably matters to you is the bus fares – only then the bus conditions. Oh well, you have every reason to be worried because they don’t really come in cheap, not when you are not an Indian citizen like me.

We actually took the very next bus to depart so falling under the category of LCD (the only category that was readable to me LOL), it had cost us a staggering INR 700 each.

It didn’t take me long to find out why it was called LCD. They really had an LCD fixed on each of the seats to keep you entertained along the way so that each hour of the grueling traveling period would pass by quickly and unnoticed.

OR rather – that was what I had wished for. Here in India, if something like an LCD on the seat of a bus is too good to be true then chances are – it might not be true.

The air-con-less bus that I took from Agra to Jaipur had a small fan on each of the seat rows but none of them was functional. Thanks God it was raining all the way so I was spared from the suffocation that I could easily get myself into in the hotness and stillness of its air if it wasn’t (raining).

But then, a bus fare THAT MUCH wouldn’t really disappoint you. Although it was a bit dilapidated with age, it was actually quite comfortable to be snuggling in especially when we’re talking about 5 hours of traveling period.

It was actually quite spacious enough for somebody who was born an Asian like me. LOL.

So, the ride from Jaipur to New Delhi turned out to be a very smooth one. If there was something that you had to (quickly) get yourself accustomed to, it’d be the continuous honking of the bus. Honking on another vehicle without any apparent reason might be considered rude and kurang hajar in Malaysia but here in India vehicles actually BEG to be honked on – probably because it was more like a friendly ‘HI’ to them.

So – 5 hours of honking and I did at one time imagine myself walking straight down to the driver and strangle him to death so that I could have my inner peace in sleep. Seriously, if sleeping is your inner weapon to kill time, it might need a little bit of effort to get one.

I am not sure about other buses but the one that we took made a BRIEF stop at this place right here.

It was so brief – probably less than 15 minutes or so you don’t really have much time to browse around. But then, there wasn’t much to browse around anyway. What you see is what you’ve got and believe me, there’s nothing much to see either. LOL.

15 minutes might be brief but it was long enough to let me make a little bit of discovery of my own. Due to the pressure of time, I ventured ordering a piece of this pizza expecting to spit it out on my first bite.

Hell no. It was so tasty, kinda richly flavored with cheese so yummy I actually spent the rest of the journey cursing myself for NOT having bought at least two pieces – or probably three- instead of one. I’d been literally force-feeding myself ever since I set foot in India a few days ago so anything to cheer my poor bowel up was very much needed at that very point of time. 😀

So – Lesson? Never ever underestimate a pizza that you’ve found in the middle of nowhere in India. It can be as good as the food there can be? LOL.

After feeding my stomach with the surprisingly yummilicious pizza, I let my eyes take their turn by enjoying the panoramic scenery of the countryside.

To tell the truth, I was still surprised how India was so blessed with beautiful countryside it actually made me wince every time I came to think of the wide expanse of Palm Oil Plantation in Malaysia. It was all over and more like an eye-sore to me really.

You know you’re nearing the city of New Delhi when you see people stopping cars and asking them to pay for the toll right there on the side of the road.

You see, our toll people are so lazy here in Malaysia.They stay in the comfort of the air-conditioned booth and use automated barrier so all they have to do is press the button to let the vehicles pass through. Here in India they use a chain to stop you from advancing further and they do it out in the open, in total interaction with the motorists.

I KNEW New Delhi would be just as interesting as Jaipur when I began to see pigs so soundly asleep on their backs in the park just on the side of the road – probably after a day of hounding on piles of trash around the city or something.

I was already surprised to see them in Agra and later in Jaipur where they seemed to have the privilege of being a stopping factor to all the vehicles in the city and now New Delhi – which was supposedly a modern and well-fenced city at least the way I had imagined it.

So, it was already dark when we finally arrived at the intended bus station in New Delhi. Mind to tell you that the bus would stop a few times to drop some of the passengers off before stopping at its final destination – which looked more like a bus stop than a bus station to me. Again, unless you’re very sure of where to stop, it’s pretty much safe to disembark at this final stop and start off from there.

I had no idea where exactly it was but I remember seeing the iconic India Gate a mile or so down the road from there.

Of course all the Tuk Tuks would be there to welcome you so it all comes down to your negotiation skills to get the best deal.

It was almost midnight when we FIRST arrived in New Delhi from Malaysia and the backpackers area of Pahar Ganj was near-empty and scarce of people. Coming back this time, it was hard to imagine how the road turned into a cornucopia of people – all eager to be part of the hustle and bustle of the famous Main Bazaar Road at night.

Energetic, lively and full of characters, it was certainly the New Delhi that we had expected!

Wohoooo. Imagine the excitement!