I travelled by the Shama Transport Volvo service from Pathnamthitta to Bangalore on Aug 22, 2010. The bus left Pathnamthitta at 4 PM. From the beginning the bus driver was complaining about something. We could feel that the pickup of the bus was poor despite being a Volvo. It had tough time overtaking rickshaws on the road!
The staff on this bus is untrained and have no sense of time. If the bus stops somewhere to pick up passengers, the staff take their own sweet time to finish the formalities. As a result we were getting delayed right from the start.
Later at night and late by an hour the bus stopped after Coimbatore where another bus was waiting. The passengers from that bus had disembarked and were waiting on the highway. We were asked to get down and board this other bus. We thought that must be a better bus so we were being shifted. But that bus did not move for half hour from the place. When it moved it made screeching sounds as if someone was being murdered, In that condition it went for a couple of kms before the driver stopped the bus and got down.
When few of us passengers checked the bus engine was belching out smoke and water and they were pouring water into it to cool it. In that condition the bus went ahead stopping every few kms for water. When we asked the driver what nonsense this was, and why we were shifted to this bus, he said don’t tell me anything, I was asked to by my manager. When we asked to speak with the manager, he said they won’t pick up phone because of Ramzan! (What is the connection?)
He said the bus will go only to Salem and we will be put on another bus. At Salem no buses were available since it was festival time. We waited from 6 in the morning to 8 before a tempo traveller agreed to take us to Bangalore. We boarded that bus and at Hosur shifted to another Volvo bus from Shama. About six hours late and four buses later, we reached Bangalore at 1230 noon.
After this torture experience I have renamed Shama Transport as "Mama Transport" and the bus sports a sticker which says Gold Class which should actually be "Old Class". This is my second bad experience on this service and would advice everyone to stay away from this Mama Transport.