I, and my sister traveled from Hyderabad to Bangalore on Kesineni’s Sleeper bus on this weekend. I’m a regular traveler on long distance Volvo buses, but this time I thought to try Sleeper buses.
Initially, the travel was a bit annoying: their practice of picking up passengers from several pick-up points on a smaller bus, waiting for 10-15 mins at each pickup point. I was informed about the pickup point at Punjagutta at 6:45pm, and the bus was 15mins before time and left at 6:35-6:40 only. (Thankfully we were 15mins before time!)
After stopping at 4-5 places, the pickup bus finally dropped us to Kesineni’s Mehdipatnam office. there we waited for roughly 15-20 mins. The place was neat, but bare-bones, except that it had around 20-25 chairs, on the main road, though the surrounding area wasn’t so good.
When we boarded the bus, we were in for a pleasant surprise! The sleeper was really great! There were compartments as you see in 2AC train (of course not as spacious): 4 berths: 2 tiers facing each other. The flooring looked like wooden, there were decent curtains, clean bedsheets, blanket, pillow: all the necessary ingredients for a good night’s sleep!
They distribute Bisleri brand Mineral water as well (a regular feature). Plus, there was a foldable LCD screen (screening a Telgu Movie) along with personal headphone and volume control, a mobile/laptop charging point, a lamp: ON EVERY BIRTH! Plus there were sufficient number of AC ducts, giving you fine grained control!
Apart from these features, the bus looked almost like new, and was very well-maintained. The price was 930/- per person, which is about 150 higher than other sleeper buses, but it is definitely worth, assuming others don’t provide such good buses. (Comment if I’m wrong on this)
The bus staff were not really so friendly, but they were reasonable for the profession. The bus was quite punctual: they started and reached on time (not even 30 mins here & there).
1 thing I must admit that sleeper bus being a non-Volvo, its suspension, sound-insulation is not as good, still you can sleep reasonably well in it. Anyways I barely know of Volvo Sleeper buses in India (Paulo Travels of Goa provide such buses, I had booked 2 tickets on 2 separate occasions, but on both occasions, they were cancelled because of breakdown of the bus). Overall, I would recommend Kesineni travels to people who’re ready to pay extra for the good sleeper experience.