My original plan after my tour of Alleppey was to get back to Madurai and then return to Chennai. But i was scared of Laxman’s driving and i decided to get back to Chennai directly as i had a company with Rooban. So this is what happened;
- We had no bus from Alleppey but there was a train by 4 PM. Rooban assumed it would be full and he suggested going to Cochin will give us more options.
- We boarded a Bus to Cochin with was one and half hour drive from Alleppey.
- Cochin was hot but was very nice city with was calm & had all attributes of a city.
- We got down and went to a place called M.G.Road which was a shopping area having lots of Big shopping centers.
- The same road had offices of many Private bus operators office & all the busses to Chennai were full.
- Then we took another auto and went to government bus-stand. Here all busses to Chennai have already left. Also bus to Pondycherry was full.
- Then we took an auto and went to Railway station only to find all trains running full.
- Then again came back to Government Bus-stop.
- Only choice was to board a bus to Coimbatore and the choice were a Trivandrum – Coimbatore bus which was about to come by 4.30 & a bus to Coimbatore from Cochin by 5.30.
- Since it was 3 o clock we had to wait till 4.30 & all bus had route names in malayalam and things were again confusing.
- Still bus to Coimbatore hasn’t arrived and we decided to board a bus to Tirupur and thought of boarding a bus to Coimbatore from there.
- When we sat we got an announcement telling Trivandaram – Coimbatore bus has arrived and we were lucky to get a cramped last seat.
- We had a hectic bumpy journey and we travelled through Tirupur – Palakkad & finally reached Coimbatore by 11 PM.
- Coimbatore is a place which doesn’t have a night life. Even second show movies starts by 8.30. Hotels gets closed by 10 PM.
- All bus to Chennai have left & again we had to work on options.
- We had a choice of leaving to our relatives house and start the next day. But i didn’t want to do that because the hard travel from Alleppey will become useless.
- We were lucky to get a cramped Mini bus which was overly dumped and no space to even stretch our legs.
- We had to immediately board the bus and we have no time to have dinner too.
- Then after 2 hours of drive driver stopped to have some tea and there i had a Maaza and we started again.
- Finally the bus reached Chennai by 9.30 AM.
Finally reached Chennai after a hectic travel for 21 consecutive hour. All this was possible only because of the the Ayurvedic Massage i had in Alleppey which kept my body cool.
AnandNataraj 