Goa Trip-Photo Blog-Part 1

Thats Varun sleeping, and he seems pretty happy with the reserved seats we got. Its not very often that you decide on a trip at 7 30 pm and go to the ticket counter at 9 pm and get reserved seats in the Chennai-Bangalore mail at 9 30 pm. So he seems to be in a rather celebratory mode, and dozes off at 2 am, only to be rudely woken up at 4 45 am when Bangalore arrived.

Bangalore was as chill as it can be on cold February morning, and its interesting to note that all chennai-bangalore trains land up on this platform which is shaped like a triangle.That was the first thing I noticed(the trainagular platform), when I landed in Bangalore in 2004, to join Infosys.It hasn't changed in 4 years :-)

From Bangalore we managed to catch a 6 am Jan Shatabdi to Hubli, and the trip was pretty peaceful as we dozed like logs, and had a very comfotable outing for just 147 rs from Bangalore to Hubli. This pic was taken from the waiting room in Hubli, where one of us took the electronic instruments for charging, while one bought food, while the other guy bought the tickets for the return journey in the reservation counter.

This was the "new" Hubli bus stand, 40 rs and 3 kms away from the Railway station. Buses from here to Panjim/Madgoan happen only twice a day, so make sure you reach Hubli between 1 and 3 30 pm, to catch what would be the last buses to Goa. There is one service at 5 pm to Madgoan, but largely these buses dont keep up time, so just hope that luck stays with you in catching the bus. The "CLOACK" room was a grim reminder of most of the facilities at the bus stand. The bus enquiry desk has a frustrated old man, who can invest only 10 seconds in answering your queries, as he proclaims himself to be busy, ticking and crossing some arbitrary tables. The KSRTC service is bad in the sense that even if the bus doesnt run full steam, they will not pick up passengers en route. Talk about profitability and revenue earning hunger, these lot of people dont seem to care much about that or customer service, given that the bus passes through a lot of remote forests whose only access to civilisation are these buses.