When things had to go wrong, they go wrong in all possible ways. It was a about a week back, when i was preparing as usual for the weekend trip home. Had tickets booked in Tatkal, and it was in WL 17. Packed everything and went to office as usual. The plan was if the ticket doesn't move, cancel the plan and get back home for a peaceful and lazy weekend.
When i reached office, got a call from a friend, checking whether i could get his return journey ticket booked by an agent and get that to native. Hoping that the tickets would move, i accepted. So that meant, whatever it is i will have to go home.
Was waiting for the tickets to move, checking the PNR status in web every now and then. Train was at 9.00PM, so expected the chart to be prepared by 5.00PM. Time tickled, 5.00, 5.30, 6.30, 7.00PM. Chart was not prepared. That was unusual, but it happened. Finally at 7.15PM, the chart was prepared, but my ticket status was at WL 12. Once again unusual, for a tatkal ticket to move just 5 seats :( So had to choose the last option, travel by BUS, go to hosur, salem and then to Madurai.
With that in mind, myself, Nirmal and his Brother started at around 7.45PM. It was fine when we started, but once we reached the bus stop to board the bus to bus stand, heavens opened up and to make matters worse we just had one umbrella. Before we got a bus, we were drenched. Finally we reached the bus stop to board bus to Hosur or Salem. And we met a huge crowd, who were waiting just like us. Rain had not stopped. There was enough crowd to fill three or four buses. We got one Hosur bus, and soon it became packed with space just to breath. The rain had reduced, and during the journey to Hosur, it had stopped. So felt relieved.
Reached Hosur around 10.30 i guess, and once again Rain was there to give us company and also the huge crowd, just like us waiting for Salem bus. The cool breeze made us shiver. No Salem bus was in sight and if there were it was fully crowded. When we were contemplating whether to return back to bangalore, we sighted a KSRTC bus to Kodaikanal. There were three sites available fortunately, but those were the seats behind the driver seat unfortunately. Still we boarded, and the ticket cost was 600, a bit more than 3 Tier AC ticket in train. And it goes only till Dindigul. Thanks to the superb road between Bangalore and Madurai, the journey was a little dreadful. Anyway all plans and positions to sleep ended in failure. At the end, reached Dindigul and boarded i reached home by morning 8.00 after 13 hours of arduous journey.
Though the journey was tiring and irritating, it felt fine to be at home. Wont be trying something like this again in the near future atleast i guess.
2 comments:
Hi da,
Looks like you had a very bad journey ;) Here I give you some tips in case if you want to do such a travel in near future. There is a train to Dharmapuri from Belandur Road at 19:15. Take that train and reach Dharmapuri and this train will be less crowded as it is a Passenger Train. From there you can get as many as Salem buses. And after reaching Salem, I hope everything will be normal ;)
It was a thrilling experience..sitting just behind the driver and praying every time he overtakes a lorry or a bus :)
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