Virtual Tour of US

Thanks to the map sites on the Internet, it is now possible to take a virtual tour of the major attractions present in the US. First it was Microsoft's http://local.live.com, which provided 'Bird's eye view' of all major cities of the US. With this, you could pretty much see every monument and every building of importance in its high-quality picture, as though you're standing right next to it. I was amazed to see clear pictures of each casino on the Las Vegas strip! This was last year.

Just recently I read about Google having introduced the 'Street View' feature in its map site. With this, you can see a 360 degree view of almost any location on the streets of the US city for which this facility has been enabled. This means that you can view the details of every little street on Manhattan Island! That's pretty amazing. Not just that, the direction arrows on this picture allows you to actually navigate in either directions of the street, thus giving you a feel of actually passing through the street. That's quite good for a virtual tour!

Buses in Kolkata

I recently got a chance to ride on the buses of Kolkata city. Trust me, my respect for Bangalore buses and their service has gone up multi-fold after seeing the Kolkata buses. It's true that they're quite economical for the reason that they are run by many private parties along with the state transport amidst stiff competition. But the condition of the buses are pathetic. It's even OK to travel during the day. The dim lights that 'illuminate' these small buses at night are even more depressing.

The seats are more of benches than seats. There is some hard cushioning at the bottom, if you're lucky, but you have hurt your back if you lean on the back rest. I found standing to be more comfortable that sitting on those seats. The left row is meant for the ladies while the right one for the men. Because they're run by private people, they stop indefinitely sometimes at a stop to gather enough people to proceed. However this problem is limited to Sundays and holidays only as otherwise they're mostly overcrowded.

I had heard before that BMTC buses, the ones in Bangalore, are some of the best in the country. It was hard for me to imagine while I was there in Bangalore, looking at those overcrowded buses with people oozing out of the doors. But, talking the condition, frequency and comfort, I must say they're much better than those of many other places that I have seen in India.