The craziness called busfanning!

Craziness comes in different forms and in varying intensities. Busfanning is perhaps among the most severe forms of craziness. Busfanning is perhaps more intense than say Railfanning or Planespotting. To be technically speak, the last two are almost illegal owing to aged pre-independence era rules that we still follow.

Buses are the most common form of public transportation in most parts of the country. Right from my childhood, I watched them with awe and always loved traveling by them. As a kid, I've even fascinated driving those monsters. Sitting on the bonnet was always a thrilling experience as a kid - seeing the driver struggle out with the steering, slamming the gears and playing around with the accelerator.

Busfanning is all about craziness now. In the olden days, happiness was to travel in buses that one hasn't traveled in, before. I remember spotting a new Euro-2 bus during a routine working day, while in college. I traveled some distance only to travel by those new Euro-2 buses. The buses had a characteristic growling sound. Traveling long distance to unknown places just to experience the ride was the thing of those days.

Gone are the days. The fun of traveling is now replaced with the competition of clicking! Exclusive coverages, and I did it before you uploads! Gone are the days people were hooked to photo sharing websites like Picasa and FlickR to see new images from fellow busfans - its all about uploading to Facebook and counting likes now.

Let me list out some crazy things busfans do, to enjoy their hobby:

1. Wake up early in the morning, travel long and click!
Thats perhaps the craziest thing bus fans do. Wake up unearthly hours, travel distances - I mean, real distances, like over 50-60kms, head to open highways, and click! Quite often, there is no food or water. I don't think busfans would get up so early for anything else!

2. Go places!
I don't know how many people do this - but I do. Go places! See new buses, experience them. Every opportunity to travel is an opportunity to experience!

3. Wait, wait and wait!
Oh yeah! Wait for eternity to see that one bus you want to see! I know people who wait for hours only for that one bus! One often ends up spending hours under the hot sun - just for that one bus. Feels so heavenly, you see.

4. Spend Sundays on this!
Spend Sundays roaming around the city seeing all that they want!

5. Chase!
This takes the cake, perhaps. Spot the bus you want, chase it down, take pics the way you want. One often ends up traveling a whole lot of distance more than originally intended.

There are more. Spend on new photography equipment, create and run websites to show their photographs. The craziness has taken a whole new dimension now - its all about beating each other in clicking a bus first - the era of exclusives. The passion is long gone, and all that remains is the greed and bloated egos of self-superiority. How I wish busfanning remains a hobby - a hobby that got me a lot of friends. Thank you all.

I wanted to write more - but lost the steam that I had. 

Comments

dineshpkm said…
Bus fans will travel 60 kms to drink coffee. They will go to Tirunelveli for buying Halwa. Crazy group.
Unknown said…
Fact to d dot . Fantastic writeup binai eta ..
Dhandapani said…
Was able to relate many of those points to my trips i had earlier. :) Thanks for the write up.