Platform7

July 25, 2017: 
This was a journey that was booked at the last moment. I had to rush home for an emergency - I took a flight to go home (a ticket booked for a cheap price, at the last minute - I decided to enjoy that flight, and did not make note of the timeline at all). After my work at my home down was over, I headed out to Kodungallur town. A new bus service was being launched from my hometown to the temple town of Kollur (Mookambika) in Karnataka. I decided to attend the program - which went on till evening. I also decided to make a journey on the first trip - I was to travel to Kozhikode. Being the inaugural trip, the service was delayed, and I did not want to risk reserving my tickets to travel from Kozhikode to Bengaluru.

It was really hot out there, plus I was exhausted from the long hot day. I dozed off for a while, but the heat wasn't helping matters. I am not a fan of non-ac buses (especially for long rides) and the heat made things really bad for me. To add to my miser…

Whats up with the title, eh? RedKnite is the call sign of AirAsia India!

This flight was part of my (rather, our) return from Trivandrum. We had to book a flight from Kochi, instead of Trivandrum since flights out of TRV were very expensive (more than twice the rates out of Kochi). We hadn't opted for onboard meals, and hadn't web checked in either - since AirAsia has the habit of charging for seat selection even during check-in - very counter productive when it comes to the penny wise (pound foolish, as well) Indian public!

July 09, 2017:
We had traveled from Trivandrum to Ernakulam by train (Jan Shatabdi Express - read about that here), and then headed for a sumptuous breakfast at Hotel Dwaraka. Dwaraka is an old property, and has a fairly good vegetarian restaurant - that serves delicious dosas! After the breakfast, we hired an Ola to head to the airport - the 37 kilometre ride to the airport from MG road took a little over an hour. We reached the airport a little past 1210…

Our return trip from Trivandrum to Bangalore was very interesting. Direct modes of transport were unviable. We were not very confident of being able to return in the evening from Trivandrum - so we had to return on Sunday. But then, we wanted to be back in Bangalore by Sunday evening - we checked flights, which were too expensive. I quickly checked for tickets from Kochi - and, bingo! The afternoon flight from Kochi had lots of tickets, and they weren't expensive either! Tickets for the flight were booked first. Then began the hunt for tickets to travel to Kochi from Trivandrum. We decided to take the Jan Shatabdi Express from Trivandrum in the morning.

July 09, 2017:
With the train set to depart at 0600hrs, we had to leave our hotel by around 0530hrs. We were not sure if it would be possible to get transportation to the railway station that early in the morning on a Sunday. We managed to get an auto - and the driver agreed to ferry all the five of us in his vehicle. It was exciti…

An urgent need to travel to Trivandrum came out of the blue. The trip was decided with just a few days to go, and the travel was on a Friday from Bengaluru! Since my brother and his family was traveling along, we had to travel by a Sleeper bus. It had to be an AC bus as well. A quick search on Redbus revealed a lot of options to pick from. We went by the ratings on redbus, and some enquiries through my friend network. I finally selected Orange Travels. Tickets weren't very cheap, and they were fairly expensive after the taxes were added.

July 07, 2017:
I reached home around 1700hrs, after a fairly tiring day at work. I had been receiving messages from Orange Travels with details of my bus from morning. We had to leave home by around 1830hrs in order to finish our dinner, and then board the bus that departs at 2015hrs. After hurrying with packing, we set off in an Uber towards Madiwala. The first task to finish our dinner - we picked Swaadam Veg Restaurant for dinner - delicious La…