Bangalore Mumbai B9R Sleeper

It was a mannat I asked the Kwhaja during my last visit, It was time to go back and thank him for the favors he had endowed on to me.

Since it was a last minute decision flights were out of the question. Trains would take 48 hours anyways I have long wanted to try out Bangalore - Mumbai by a B9r for long.

 I had my trip to Mumbai from Bangalore lined up for 7th August. I had booked on VRL i Shift Sleeper with a 4PM Anand Rao Circle departure after some help from Busmatterz and BCMT member suggestions. The seat number was L5 the first single lower berth . On 7th left Indiranagar at 3 PM and took an Meru to ARC. The journey was uneventful and reached by 3:45.

Veera built Non AC sleeper cum seater.

A GJ registered I-shift Sleeper of VRL.

Veera built Non AC sleeper cum seater(white) along with Veera built Seater.

This was my first visit to the VRL ARC 'Bus stand'. I was pleasantly surprised with the kind of facilities there. The waiting area though spartan had enough fans and charging points. There were 2 or 3 enquiry counters and a similar number of Booking counter. The were at least 3 stalls selling snack and food. Including one stall from Omkar,'Which i realized is VRL group owned food business'. Got a bottle of water from there. The wash rooms were pretty ok considering the location. What impressed me most was that they had an Mother care room for mothers with infants.

Baby Care room , what an initiative!

An regular multiaxle came for pickup around 4 . I realized that this was the 3:30 PM ARC Mumbai service. I waited , and my bus arrived by 4:20 . This was a little bad. Boarding started soon. I left my bag in the boot of the bus and boarded. Chatted with the driver and went and sat in my seat. We departed by 4:40 PM. We had pickups at Rajaji nagar, Yashwantpur and Tumkur. The first driver was a 50 year old one , who told me he has been driving for the past 28 years. His driving style was pretty sedate, on the four lane stetch kept doing around 90-100. Not too much honking.

My bus!!

The interiors of the bus was nice. Veera which has built the sleepers for VRL has done a good job on some aspects. The door making it a separate driving cabin though is a safety issue, credit to the crew for never locking the door though. The berth on one side has an 10 or 12 inch LCD screen with a power switch. On the other side it has got an plug point, with a pouch for holding the mobile,a LED bright night lamp, a speaker with a switch. The switch for the speaker ensures that you can switch it on and off and decide if you want to listen to movie/music. A total of 3 movies were played, 2 in the night and 1 post Pune in the morning.

AV inside the bus.

After the pickups the bus was non stop till the VRL checkpoint/restaurant at Chitradurga, we reached ther by 8:45. (I was happy we did not waste time at the Tumkur check point). The Chitradurga check point is pretty huge. A small restaurant was in one side. I had dinner there , a little too spicy , but okay food. VRL seems to have invested a lot of money in these check points. This one had about 30~40 toilets each for men and women. We left this place by 9:05.

I tried sleeping for some time and then decided to sit in the cabin. I asked the driver and he was okay with the idea. He told me that they stop outside hubli for refueling and then Kholapur checkpoint for driver change. I was chatting with the driver for quite some time, and he was talking about VRl placing orders for another 60 Multiaxle volvos, he was not sure if they were B9rs or B11Rs . Stopped outside Hubli at a petrol pump and filled in around 320 liters of diesel. Around 12 when the bus gout out of the Hubli bypass decided to go and sleep.

Woke up around 3:10 and realized the bus was at the VRL kholapur check point. Went back to sleep . Woke up when the bus reached Pune and the crew was calling out for passengers to get down. I looked at my watch the time was 6. It took us some time to drive through the pune bypass and get into the Expressway. It was almost 7 when we got into the expressway. Got in to a lot of traffic near the Lonaval ghat. I saw a couple of fresh accidents on the way. After desceding the ghats the drive was smooth, and we stopped near the toll for a bio break and started back quickly. We reached Kalamboli by almost 8:15 or so. From here we were stuck in weekday morning traffic. We reached Sion by 10:30 AM.

All in all a pretty decent service. I presume a 2:30 PM ARC departure with a 6:30 or 7 AM Sion arrival would be possible with same fuel efficiency and max speeds. As the bus will save at least an hour on traffic at both Bangalore and Mumbai.