States and Union territories covered: 13
Theme: Local Transport and Connectivity across India
Local transport is one of the most useful commodities that India has. Rickshaws, buses, local trains, metro and taxis are an integral part of our day to day lives. However, we have never had the opportunity to explore some unique modes of transport like ferries, monorail, trollies, etc. which are known to be present in different states of the country. Thus, we plan to devote time to find out and compare the pros and cons in various transport systems and modes of connectivity which involve the transport vehicles as well as the type of roads etc. in India. We first analyzed the transport of West Bengal, Kolkata, where we travelled with different modes such as Trams travelling through narrow roads, local buses, metro system, horse-pulled carts, and man powered rickshaws which has decreased now. Then, we visited Sikkim, Gangtok, where we used shared taxi for reaching there and notice that they have quite high fair. Since it was a hilly area, we were also fortunate to notice high performance bikes such as KTM, SR150 and Royal Enfield to compensate for hilly areas. We then arrived at Majuli, Assam, by train and taking a ferry from Jorhat town which is very reasonable and runs at frequent times. For roaming around Luhit river and watching sunset, we rented local cycles and covered most of the uncharted areas. We then reached Guwahati after travelling in a ferry, a shared taxi and train. We left Guwahati for Shillong at 11 AM in a shared taxi. The roads were well maintained and the greenery along the roads made the journey memorable. We took a shared taxi from Shillong to Cherrapunji and visited 7 sister waterfalls and eco-park however due to unavailability of shared taxi in return, a truck driver offered to drop us at our hotel. We then payed our visit to Ganga Aarti in Varanasi by shared auto rickshaws and left for Delhi via Train and visited most of its places via it extensive metro network. In Rajasthan, we explored various places via RTDC, Van, Taxi and RSRTC bus, and Auto Rickshaw for visiting various heritage places of Rajasthan. Also, we travelled in the lifeline of Mumbai, the local trains, and took a bus to Pune via Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Thus, we explored most of the transportation across various places in India and learnt many things regarding transportation across the states.
