Platform7

I hadn't considered other options when thinking of a bus journey from Kannur to Bengaluru - it had to be Golden! I had two reasons - one, they had brand new Volvo coaches, and two, they were the best on the route in terms of service and timings. Almost all the north kerala operators prefer bookings at their counters than online - they do not offer seats on online booking websites (not even their own website) during peak days. I was traveling right after the Onam weekend, and it was tough getting tickets. I briefly romanced the idea of taking a KSRTC bus for this single reason. A friend came to my rescue - he promised to get my seats blocked, and he did it for me. Since, it was during the peak season, the office staff suggested that I pay and confirm the seats - I just did that. A couple of days before I paid for my tickets, they replaced their buses with brand new Volvo B8Rs as well. So this was to be my first journey on a Volvo B8R.

As a matter of caution, I reconfirmed my reser…

The requirement was simple - we (I & TW) had to travel from Thrissur to Kannur to attend a wedding. I initially looked at buses - all of them were overnight journeys, but they had awful departure timings from Thrissur. Trains had even worse timings. I had to take the day train - like always. There were 5 trains with sitting accommodation - and I opted for the first train of the day, the 16305 Ernakulam Kannur Intercity Express. Our tickets were waitlisted at the time of booking. In the run-up to the journey, a lot of this happened - the deluge washed away a part of the permanent way. The railways worked on a war-foot basis to repair the damage. In the mean time, the ticket moved down from waitlist to confirmed. IRCTC sent me a message as soon as the ticket got confirmed. I received another message when the chart was prepared - this new message had the seat numbers as well.

August 26, 2018:
We started from home around 0620hrs - after a fairly heavy breakfast, with a very heavy hear…