Life is hectic here during working days. I am happy that I am able to write one and sent by Tuesday. It makes me sit until 9 at night.
I think I should tell something, which will just give a brief idea of the transport and currency.
Pounds come in currency notes of £50, £20, £10 and £5. The £20 and £50 are broader than our currency notes and doesn't fit in to our purse by width. But they are short in length. The coins starts with £2, £1 pound and then, 50p(pence), 20p,10p,5p,2p and 1 penny.
£2 coins has inner circle made of nickel surrounded by bronze. £1exactly matches our 5 rupee coin in dimensions, the only difference is, it is made of bronze. This is vastly used for telephone booths, and many other auto payments. If our 5 rupee could work here, it will be really great ! 50p,20p,and 10p are nickel. 50p is the input for chocolate machines. 5p, 2p and 1p are brass. They normally don't have any value, but you will get back the change correct to 1p. Like South Africa, here also I have never heard a person saying I don't have change nor seen anybody rounding off the amount.
The public transport system is, as you may have heard, excellent ! It is costly, and to travel the same distance in the same tube, it is different ! London is divided mainly in to 6 zones, with zone 1 as the
central London where you have everything, from Wax Museum, Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace to the banks, other museums and important places. zone 2 to 6 becomes concentric circles around zone1. If you travel to, from or through zone 1 in a tube, you will have to pay £2 for a trip ! It becomes lesser for all the other zones. You have daily,weekly, weekend, monthly passes, which you can go for the zones you want. With a valid pass in a tube, you can travel in a of the bus service inside London ! Most of the buses are double-decker buses. All the buses are single man operated. The driver collects the tickets/verifies the pass while you get in through the front door. He controls the opening and closing of the exit door in the middle of the bus and entry door. If the bus is too crowded, he will stop in front of you and open the exit door, people get down and he closes it. I have not seen anyone peeping in through the exit door.
Still there are some old style double decker buses operated with a driver and conductor, in central London. They are the same as the ones in Trivandrum, Chennai or Mumbai. You can jump and or out anytime. It is more apt for central London as the traffic moves very slow. For buses, they have taken out the zone concept. Anywhere in London for a trip, it is £1.
There are enough of cars on the road in spite of very high parking charges and high fuel prices. It averages from £2.5 per hour to park in the road side and petrol/diesel costs around 75p per litre ! People prefer tubes to buses as you don't know when you will reach the destination in a bus. But as we all know, the network of buses will be more efficient than any rail network.
I have a pass for zone 2 and 3 which costs £48 per month. During weekends, my travel will be more in zone1 and so will go for a weekend pass which will cost £7 and allows to travel free for two days in all 1,2,3,4 zones.
The distant rail system amazed me with the infrastructure these people have. There are more than 10 rail stations situated around London. No British rail will drop you in the central London. I will clarify. All these rail stations are built with a tube station in the border of zone1. Each station has its own set of destinations and each are like our Chennai central with some 10 platforms at least ! So if you want to go to Oxford, the train starts from paddington and if you want to go to Cambridge, it is Liverpool Street and so on. The passes are valid in the British rail for the trains that travel till end of zone 6. The comparison of British rail and tube are very easy : just like our normal trains and electric suburb trains. Here the only difference is, all is closed air-conditioned and is as costly as our air-conditioned coaches are. But the rates are very flexible and you will get a good deal if you know the system and plan your journey.
But what I appreciate is people love to walk here. I am walking with a crowd anywhere in Central London. You can see long queues for Wax museum and London Eye on all weekends.
Again, I find a lot of India here. People don't have time and suddenly you will find a person who has all the time in the World to help you. If you are not that lucky, may be the person who is ready to help you to show your way to an address will be a drunkard who is wandering around because he couldn't find his own house ! I am not joking, it happened to me first thing landing in London. I was wandering with all my luggage in Victoria at night 11 and got only a drunkard who came to me and asked me 'Can I help you ?'. I got the address of the hotel I had booked from the airport and then, had everything I have with me- including the traveler’s cheque ! So I realised then, London is safe at 11 if you are in Victoria; even if the streets are empty. That is all for now.
