OpenStreetMap
I haven’t written a diary entry in a while, so this one’s like a mash-up of multiple entries 😉 Bear with me.
A week or two ago, I set out to survey a bus route that has long intrigued me - the “Outer Mudrika Service” aka “बाहरी मुद्रिका सेवा”, or “OMS” for short. Like all “Mudrika” buses, it takes a circular route - but in this case, a big circle of Delhi. As of the 6th of August, I had mapped it as serving 84 stops - the average bus route serves at most 40, and this was not even it’s final form…I mean, I’d only mapped around half of it 😛
The survey turned out to be more grueling than I had anticipated. OMS starts and ends at Uttam Nagar, so I headed there (also by OMS, adding stops along the way I had missed in the night the last time). At Uttam Nagar Terminal, though, hardly anyone seemed to know exactly where to board it. I stood around an hour, not daring to sit lest I miss it when it comes (the fact that it’s a somewhat low-frequency route didn’t help). Figured I’d eat my packed lunch, but the place had an abundance of flies. Twice I walked between the terminal and the first bus stop where I suspected I’d actually find it, almost a kilometer away.
On the second time, at around 16:00 hours, I actually succeeded in boarding one. Wasn’t ideal - it would terminate halfway through, at Anand Vihar. Better than nothing, I figured.
Turns out, it was a blessing in disguise. Not only was even half of its route fairly long (particularly when you’re hungry and tired from standing so long! [1]), some manner of procession near Burari brought it to a halt at the apex of a flyover for some fifteen minutes. Atleast I got to eat 😛 By the end of it, my phone was running low on juice and I myself was thirsty and out of water. Called it a day at Anand Vihar and took a Metro back home.
Every time you click on Walk, the drunkard, or let’s say the robot, walks 50 steps (where a step means going from one OSM node to the next OSM node on a way). At every corner it chooses one of the ways at random (trying to avoid directions he took very recently).
