Planes, trains or automobiles?

Baroda to Hyderabad, approximately 1200 kms. How to get from here to there? The bus (or a car) isn’t really an option – too far (and I don’t have one) and it would only be worse than the train.

So that whittles the choice down to the first two. Now, let me try to be scientific about this:

	Train	Plane	Value in monetary terms - traveling by train	Value in monetary terms - traveling by plane
Cost	1300 rupees (2nd a/c)	7200 rupees – special fare if I’m lucky	5900 rupees	-5900 rupees
Time	23 hours	About 61/2 hours including waits at airports	Since no one’s paying for my time at the moment - none	Since no one’s paying for my time at the moment - none
Company	As always, will probably end up with lousy company – or more likely just non-company. Paan chewing, lewd middle-aged men (though now that I’m in that same age category, I’d probably give a s**t);totally non-communicative, and probably nothing much to say even if they did, women, etc. I always have the lousiest luck with traveling companions – I pride myself on being friendly with everyone (that’s how I am when I am alone, people, for those of you who think you know me), but I always have the worst luck of the draw.	We don’t have to sit face-to-face and it’s too short a trip to care even if we did.	?	?
Proximity of seat to loo	Too close and you’ll have to plug your nostrils the whole trip and breathe through your mouth.	Hopefully better, though who can say?	-some	some
Risks and Dangers	Armed bandits could enter compartment, Godhra type incidents could occur, all kinds of things could happen - certainly plenty of time and opportunity	Could explode, fall out of sky, get hijacked etc.	Probably paltry compensation!	Family gets better compensation! – that’s just the way it is.
Special Effects	The sounds of the train on the tracks – tadak,tadak,tadak – soothing – and the only form of transportation that used to not give me travel sickness as a child	Views from the sky	?	?
Loo	Will have to hold it in for 23 hours. If I really had to, could probably stand it for a few seconds to pee and pretend like it never happened. But what if I ate something bad? As I keep telling people, I am ever so glad that the Indians (though we seem think we are the smartest, brightest, most brilliant people on planet earth and invented everything) had nothing to do with modern technological developments such as the aeroplane. And conveniently now, people will point out that it was the British who screwed us, took us for everything we had etc. and gave us the railway system and the toilets in them that open to the tracks. But get over all that, people, it’s been more than 60 years, do something about it. No one is responsible for the crap here but we ourselves (when I can get told that about my personal life, it should certainly be true for everything else).	Can hold it in for this short period of time.		Priceless!

I think we have a winner.