This Indian bus is actually a high-security mobile laboratory
From the plains of Uttar Pradesh to cloud-skimming Himalayan villages, RAMBAAN, a Biosafety Level 3 lab on wheels, is chasing down the next big, bad bug.
- 8 January 2026
- 6 min read
- by Nasir Yousufi
At a glance
- RAMBAAN may look like a regular bus, but it’s a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory. Together with a team of scientists, technicians, and, of course, a specialist driver, it’s ready to crack the next mystery outbreak.
- To earn that security badge, work on the bus is a tightly controlled affair, with scientists jokingly referring to it as a "space shuttle." But for the bus's driver at least, working on RAMBAAN is also “a privilege”.
On a hazy morning, as the November sun starts to warm up the streets of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, a middle-aged man checks through the tools in his toolkit, grabs his tiffin-box and helmet, and gets on his two-wheeler to head off for a day’s work.
Half an hour later he kills the scooter’s engine at Baba Raghav Das Medical College. His workplace is parked on a campus lot: it appears, at first glance, to be a blue-and-white passenger bus. In fact, it is a highly sophisticated mobile laboratory, certified Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) – the second-highest biosafety level there is – and for the past two years, the man has been its expert driver.
Meet RAMBAAN: a biosecure lab on wheels
Every morning he puts on protective gear and ensures the power supply, battery levels and other technical parameters are at optimal levels: it’s his job to keep the bus housing one of the most advanced mobile labs in the country in ‘ready’ mode.
“It is not merely a lab on wheels, it is the lab equipped with country’s most powerful and advanced-level health science and electronic gadgetry. I feel privileged to look after the bus,” the driver told VaccinesWork. “Every new day offers something new to explore,” he said.
Known as RAMBAAN – short for Rapid Action Mobile BSL3+ Advanced Augmented Network – the bus is one of only two mobile BSL-3 labs in India, both of which were inaugurated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s a vital piece of kit in an outbreak emergency, explained Dr Ashok Kumar Pandey, senior scientist and head of viral immunology and vaccine research at the India Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) in Gorakhpur. When the agents of infection are unknown, mysterious or new, the lab can be parked up at the epidemic epicentre to collect samples and do advanced testing on the spot.
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“The first response involves the collection of samples followed by thorough testing. The results involve complete correlation between different aspects of testing like on the ground symptoms, samples and patients. The functioning of a lab involves the collective efforts of different experts,” said Dr Gaurav, another scientist associated with the mobile lab.
In addition to the driver, who concerns himself with the vehicle, the lab team includes virologists, epidemiologists, immunologists, microbiologists and lab technicians. All of them have been trained in emergency preparedness, the bus’s specialty.
“[RAMBAAN] is not for routine investigation. This is for emergency investigating mysterious and unknown pathogens,” said Dr Pandey. “If something new happens or an unknown and uncommon disease breaks, this bus is quickly deputed to carry out the testing. Those cases which are not being detected on regular models are also tackled with the help of this mobile bus,” he added.
Welcome to the “space shuttle”
The lab is “tri-secured,” explains Dr Pandey: the sample, technician and environment are each protected against contamination. “It is mostly used for cases which are high-risk, mysterious and [for which we] don’t have vaccines or preventive measures. The high-risk cases are mostly tackled in this lab, because one does not know how the pathogen or agent of disease is going to react with you or the environment,” he said.
It has double pressurised doors and an identity-based entrance – access is closely controlled. The effect of all that security is borderline otherworldly. “Looking at everyone around wearing the protection gear, whenever I work inside the bus, it feels that I am in a space shuttle. It is a complete closed system and you are working in a closed chamber,” said Dr Pandey.
“We need to wear special protection gear and take sterilised showers on entering or exiting from the bus. We can move, but in a limited space, as everyone works inside a designated cabin,” said Ravi Shankar, a technician associated with the lab.
Work is the only fuel keeping the team of health experts going inside the bus. “Food is not allowed in the bus. One can’t think of eating in the lab, as you never know the nature of a pathogen. Sometimes it can be highly contagious,” he added.
While pathogenic transmission is carefully excluded, another kind of transmission runs constantly: the lab is fitted with hi-tech communication gadgetry that means all test results, as well as GPS coordinates and CCTV footage, are fed onto a central system in real time.
High demand
“We have carried out a lot of outbreak investigations with the help of this mobile lab,” said Dr Rajiv Singh, Nodal Officer for the Gorakhpur mobile lab. “For last two years, whenever our team gets information related to the outbreak of some disease, the mobile lab is a first choice to carry out the investigation, owing to its advanced level of protection and diagnostics.”
While the emergence of a deadly Disease X may be top of mind for any scientists working in outbreak preparedness, the mystery diseases the mobile lab helps to crack aren’t necessarily caused by new pathogens, and they don’t necessarily prove to be alarmingly destructive. Sometimes the culprit may be a familiar bug, presenting itself in a different form. During one puzzling outbreak in a village in neighbouring Bihar, for instance, the lab pinpointed a common perpetrator: varicella-zoster virus, better known as chickenpox.
In any case, the BSL-3 lab saves precious time, and helps decision-makers to concentrate resources where they’re most needed. When the lab rolls into town, experts and technicians no longer need to transfer samples to faraway technical hubs, such as the city of Pune. Since sample collection and processing happen in the same place, the risk of further spread of infection is reduced.
RAMBAAN’s Gorakhpur base means the lab spends much of its time in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. “We collect samples from Bihar, North-East and other northern states in the country,” said Dr Pandey.
In early 2025, the bus was called to Rajouri, a remote part of the northern territory of Jammu and Kashmir – almost 1,600 km from ‘home’.
“The lab proved to be instrumental. After the on-spot collection of samples, our team was able to perform on-spot testing and diagnosis. The hilly Badhal village in the frontier Rajouri district was suffering from some mysterious disease resulting in the death of many people.
“With the help of RAMBAAN, we were able to finally rule out the presence of any pathogen responsible for the mysterious disease. Instead the disease was associated with some toxic agents present in the village water spring,” he said.
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