Platform7

May 03, 2012: My quick visit to Bangalore was heading to a close. I was desperately looking for tickets to return home. Thursday night plus summer holidays meant that almost every bus to Kerala was running full! I tried every operators’ website, but every bus was either full, or had only the last row seats empty. The story was same for Karnataka SRTC as well. I decided to check out the travel agents in Madiwala area. I headed first to Friends Travels – Kallada G4’s bus was full by then. Then went to Shama – they were full as well. Then tried a handful of operators including Kallada (Suresh Kallada), KPN, Viji, etc – all of them had tickets only to Thrissur bypass. Getting off at Thrissur bus at 4 or 5 in the morning is a nightmare – public transportation would wake up only after 5:30 or 6 in the morning. I decided to return home empty handed, and may be try out my luck with some train (yeah... a bit over-ambitious for sure).

After returning home, I checked the railway site and was …