Bangalore Traffic Photo blog

Here are some photos I took when travelling in bangalore to/from office or other travel to reach my destination and was stopped and diverted or caught in a traffic jam for absurd reasons like someone suddenly built a tent in the middle of the road or buffaloes were happily grazing in the median in an arterial road during peak hours or a conservancy worker was stopping the choke-a-bloc traffic just for cleaning the road at 6 pm.





Big daddy just took over the road. sorry the way belongs to him now.

this ancient piece of metal which still has an engine and called as a lorry in india just blocked the 20 ft road at is the only exit road to my block of city. now I dont have a way to get out of my road. question them, oops you might get beaten up. call the cops? they dont care and wont come unless you pay them the cost of the lorry.






This was a picture I took before the 16 floor Mantri Altis, the most posh and expensive apartment in downtown bangalore, in cunningham cross on cubbon road opposite chinnaswamy cricket stadium. yes downtown bangalore still has medows where buffalo herds still graze during peak hour traffic.






hai hai! tch tch! wondering what that is? the greatest indigenous vehicle invented in India. the bullock cart. still rules the roads of bangalore. and this one was blocking the lead road to my block and all I can do is go behind this at 2 Kmph with my 105 BHP car. Overtaking ? not possible.the road is just 20 ft in which 10ft is encroached.
I wonder why they sell cars in india.






What do you think that is? a lane or gali? nope. thats the main road to a full 4-5 blocks layouts behind manipal hospital on airport road. this 20 feet road which narrows down to 10 feet after the gate is the only way to access these layouts where it is not possible for 2 big cars to pass parallelly. this is not an exception but a norm in bangalore. most mainroads in private layouts are just 20 feet and that too partly encroached.

oh! thats not someones backward. thats the 9th main (LOL here main roads are just 20 ft wide) road new tippasandara. one family here decided to take over the road for a couple days for a family function. what do road users do? well go back, they dont care if u go to work or not but they need the road today for their family. the shamiana (tent) was just being built when I took this pic. for the next 2 days they had a complete shamiana with walls on all sides. question them? well! du want to get beaten upby a family and all their relatives? call the cops? oh I tried. looks like they were already tipped ;)

Supply chain! a coke supply van parked in a no parking zone at 9:30 a.m, blocking traffic. this is the scene every day during peak hours on this road and many. you can also see garbage collection trucks and other supply chain vehicles blocking traffic in almost every road in bangalore. Conservancy work, garbage collection, supply chain etc always hapen only between 9am and 11 am here blocking traffic. I guess 6 am is midnight for the bangalore corporation. or may be they just love traffic jams.





Attraction? Distraction in traffic? relaxation in a jam? ;)















a panaromic view of Malleshpalya! one of upcoming layouts inside kaggadasapura. 100s of 5+storied apartments of all shapes and sizes. 10s of 1000s of houses all locked inside this area called mallesh palya inside this maze locked on all sides without exit roads. the only entry/exit point into this maze of apartments is a 3KM long 15 feet road which connects to the 30ft BEML to kaggadasapura dead end main road somewhere near the middle. houses houses every where but no roads to reach them. soon helicopters and flying machines will be the only means of transport in Bangalore.




Haphazard growth, condo clusters, skyscrapers, ghettos, slums, villages, manufacturing industries, software parks all mixed up without a proper plan and zoning. more views below.

















ahh! thats just the way construction steel is carried. this is pretty safe. i'll add more pics of steel rods protruding 2 meters out of the truck and probably poking some bikers in their face or breaking a windshield. this is the de facto supplychain standards in india.









more vehicles with extra fittings as promised.

The reason why Bangalore is a clean city. thats the conservancy workers dumbing garbage collected from near by areas into a truck at 10 am in the morning blocking the narrowest point in Nagavarpalya main road and helping traffic pile up on either side for few hundreds meters and giving office goers some stress to start with before the enter the mayhem on the arterial roads.





no its not some rural village where I took this pic. this in in the heart of indranagar bangalore. Tractors are the standard way of transporting water, household items, gas cylinders etc. its the pickup truck in bangalore and also help in creating designer pot holes on muddy roads using its tyres and occationally topple over to block traffic for half a day. this along with stray cows/dogs, bullock carts and mud roads help feel the aura of a rural village right in the heart of bangalore. you never know, we might soon find paddy grown in the medians.







Drivers delight ends with a nightmarish surprize. The NICE peripheral ring road around bangalore. this is the section connecting mysore road to bannergetta road. the road is amazing, best by any global standards 4 lanes + 2 service lanes with walls on both sides and a 2 lane lawned median and shoulder and central drains. 200KMPH will be a breeze here if you have the horsepower but surprize surprise. the politicians in bangalore dint want this to happen. so they made sure a farmer who wont sell his land which is needed to complete the last 200 mts to connect bannergetta road built a wall just to stop the road abruptly and even the mud paths to the side of it to reach bannergetta road are badly dug up so if you wanna try some adventure sports and smart enough to maneuver your car thru a 5 feet wide ridge without toppling it you can proceed to bannergetta road.

Traffic jam on a 6 lane(+service lanes) expressway for miles together. This was when I travelled from bangalore to chennai on NH4 expressway. Apparently the highly intelligent and scientific traffic police of Bangalore had setup Nakabandis (baricades which block the roads completely and would let just one vehicle pass it after turning the steering to extreme right once and extreme left once) before and after every junction and dint care to remove them during peak traffic. this helped traffic pile up for 15 kms continuously on NH4 from electronics city to hosur border. it took me more than 2 hours to travel 20 kms on a 6 lane _expressway_.

Apparently Bangalore police had learnt some dangerous life threatening brute force techniques to control the unruly traffic from the Tamilnadu police like nakabandhi to check speed/alertness of driver, road bumbs called speed breakers which break the bottom of your car or can trip a two wheeler rider caught unawares and kill them and so on. Unfortunately they over did these in numbers (thinking with the one grey cell left in their brains) like have a road bump every 100m and a nakabandi every km that too at peak hours. Also they ignored to learn the other skills needed to make these tools effective from the TN police like employing brute force, rowdy nature, hard work(like working 16 hrs a day), some pragmatic sense and most importantly to report to duty , patrol at night, be around to put the tools to use and remove the tools when it makes the situation gets worse.