At the month of December, amidst the din of cancelled and delayed trains, I chased the infamous Magadh Express in my trip to Patna. Magadh Express, like Bihar, had a glorious past and has been regarded as a quick and reliable train in certain era. But now it has become an epitome of Indian Railways' lack of punctuality and a 10 hour delay is deemed normal with this train. So besides my strategy to go to Bihar, the simple fact I was performing it in Magadh Express, attracted both alert and amazement in my Patna buddies. I was not surprised when a 16 hour journey turned into a 28 hour crawl through East UP and Bihar, using routine unscheduled stops at the middle of nowhere.
The strategy was to hit Patna on the day of Dec 10 and also attend my friend's wedding on Dec 13, with one of by friend working in a Digital Marketing Company in Patna, has some contact with one travel agent. He planned the journey ahead. This was likely to be followed with a 1 day exploration of Patna on Dec 10. After Patna, I'd planned a tour of Buddhist cities of Bodhgaya, Rajgir and Nalanda until Dec 14, once I needed to return to grab the Exact Same infamous Magadh Express from Patna Junction at the day. As occurs in many travel journeys, not everything went according to this strategy.
Anyone's first impressions of Patna are largely similar. It's a crowded town, filled with traffic jams and chaos. The town does not have any internal public transport system and shared autos is the sole medium to sail. While autos do an adequate job of linking different areas of the town, the autorickshaw pilots (sarcasm intended) cram as many people as possible to generate an excess buck. Therefore, unless and until one is fine to squeeze himself/herself at a corner of a crowded open automobile, it is far better to take a taxi. I took the automobile.