A rainy day in Mumbai

 Since yesterday, any news channel you open, its occupied by Mumbai rain.Mumbai was lashed by heaviest ever rain in the month of June. At places it recorded as big as 530 mm of rainfall. Of course, necessary preparations were not in place to tackle such high rainfall. What resulted was a chaos everywhere. The rain disturbed day to day activities of Mumbai city. First and foremost effect was observed on the traveling routes.

 The lifeline of Mumbai is its local train service. If local trains are stopped, every thing stops. That's  what happened yesterday. Most of the railway tracks in the low lying areas were underwater. One snap of Chuna Bhatti station showed water filled till the platform level. There were jokes making round on whatapp saying, "India has developed first train that runs on water. Japan and Germany are jealous of India". 

All the commuters who have to use locals couldn't get out of their starting stations because all the locals were stopped.  Alternative to locals is road way. BEST also has efficient transportation system in Mumbai. Infact at most of the places buses were traveling. But, even these routes were filled with water enough upto the levels of car bumper. At places, even the half of the trucks were seen under water.

 Those roads where there was no water clogging were clogged with all kinds of vehicles. Forget, buses or cars, even two wheelers which otherwise finds it easy to make space to move ahead were stuck at places. And once, you are stuck in this traffic, you are stuck for a big time. You can neither move ahead through this traffic nor can you leave your vehicle on road. The only option was to stay back at home. Those who news early morning, stayed back home.

 But then there are enthusiasts, who wants to convert these moments into adventurous ones. There are many spots in Mumbai where you can see sea water reaching upto roads. Yesterday was also a day for high tide coinciding with the heavy rains. As a result, sea was at its best with tides as high as 4.5 mts hitting the shore. And obviously, there will be mumbaikars who wants to get drenched with these high tides.

But deep inside, sea had turned into monster. It was advised to all the fishermen not to enter the sea. A look of sea from Worli-Bandra sea link would have made one think whether it was right decision to climb up on this route.

Overall, it was an altogether different experience. It could have reached the disastrous stage of July 26, 2005. But some how with all the information available on news, internet, it was possible to tackle the day without any big mishap.

P.S: All the photos were taken from internet. 

Air Bike - Dream coming true!

All the followers of Sci-Fi movies must be craving a vehicle  which will individually take him/her from one place to another through air. Even the non Sci-Fi followers must have at some point of time, thought about a mode that will help them avoid every day road traffic.

With time, all such expectations and dreams are turning into reality. A bike that literally fly through air will soon be hitting markets. Two relevant names have been making rounds now a days among the enthusiasts.

Flike

A Hungarian project where such a vehicle is called "Flike" is one of the leading group coming up with this idea of flying through air. More details of the project can be found a:

http://whatisflike.com/

Their basic concept is to use the technique of Helicopters. An animation of their idea is given on the site. They have even managed to take first manned trial. A video of the same is embedded along.

All said and done, I will be little skeptical to sit at the center of three high speed rolling blades. It appears too risky for one thing and second, it will be too cold I guess sitting at the receiving end of three high speed fans. 

 Another approach is that of Hovercraft. An American company has come up with approach and named it Aero-X Hovercraft. This thing is pretty much finalized and if every thing goes well, it will hit the market by 2017. You can even book your Aero-X Hovercraft by visiting this site:

http://aerofex.com/buy/

This thing costs only 85000 $.

Well now it depends on individual how one adapts to this new coming change.

All they say at the moment is this will help you to avoid road traffic, but what will happen to air traffic. Uptill now one had to check left and right to cross the road, but now you will have to check up and down too.

With new facility, new rules also come.