Holiday rush begins

Holidays are almost here. It’s time for many to pack their bags and board the next train or bus out of Bengaluru. However, there are no seats or berths available on most trains and buses. Even the additional holiday coaches on trains and buses are full.

A few buses have even increased their fares to make maximum profit of the festival season. People feel they would rather travel by their own vehicle rather than wait for tickets.

Swapna V, who has made plans to travel to Chennai and other places this vacation, says she has found it very difficult to get tickets. She says, “The railway bookings for Dasara vacation open 60 days in advance. The rush is huge and most people have done their bookings much early. It is sometimes difficult to plan a vacation in advance and for those who want last minute bookings, like us, there are no tickets available.” Swapna says that she sometimes travels with her daughter and she says, “We always prefer to reserve tickets when the two of us are travelling. We find it unsafe to travel on an unreserved compartment because of safety issues,” she adds.

There’s a huge variation in ticket rates on buses and trains during the holiday season. Tickets on Volvo buses and KSRTC cost almost double and if one happens to be a last-minute traveller, one is forced to pay more. AVK Nair who plans to travel to Kerala points out that there are no tickets available on trains. “I travel to my hometown in Kerala regularly but I’ve noticed that this has been the scenario every year. The railway and KSRTC officials don’t seem to take any extra effort to make a traveller’s life any easy,” he says. Nair is now forced to travel by his own vehicle.  

The officials with KSRTC and South Western Railways, say that arrangements have been made to cater to the holiday rush. KSRTC have deployed additional buses to Chennai, Hyderabad, Kerala, Pune, Panaji and Vijayawada. The fares have been hiked by 10 per cent, confirms Nirmala, system administrator, KSRTC. “Tickets are available both at the counter and people can book about 25,000 tickets online. The bookings open a month in advance,” she says. Nirmala says that the buses have different categories such as sleeper, club  and ordinary seats. “The sleeper costs Rs 1,200 and the club costs anywhere between Rs 1,500 and Rs 1,700. The ordinary seats go for Rs 650,” she adds. Sridhar Murthy, senior divisional commercial manager South Western Railways, Bengaluru division, points out that trains to Jaipur, Patna, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and Kerala are all booked and the waiting lists are long.

He says that they used to deploy additional trains to all these places but now these trains have been regularised. “We always have additional staff to help at all the train booking counters. During Dasara this year, we have a few additional trains running from Bengaluru to Sambalpur, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Howrah and Visakhapatnam just to mention a  few,” elaborates Sridhar.

He also says that waiting lists are scanned everyday and cleared as and when required. It’s not only families who find it difficult, but also students who have a hard time trying to get tickets to return home for the holidays.

Sachin Singh, who has just completed his engineering, says he always finds it hard to get tickets to travel to Delhi. “We can never plan in advance because of the exams and when we try at the last minute, it is impossible to get tickets. We would either have to pay extra money or if it is an emergency, travel by flight which is very expensive,” says Sachin.