I recently traveled from Chennai to Bangalore by Sangita Travels and my experience was nothing short of frustrating and irritating.
I had booked a ticket via Redbus on Sangita for the Chennai to B’lore trip. My reporting time was at 11.40 PM on 24th April 2011 and the bus was scheduled to depart from Koyambedu at 11.55 PM. Having reached the place at 11, I headed to the Sangita office to report and they gave me a ticket with the bus number. Surprisingly, they don’t accept the mTicket nor the redBus printout on the bus.
At the office we were told to wait near an Indian Oil petrol station. Apparently, Sangita Travels doesn’t have any stand/place of its own in the bus stand unlike most of the other travel operators. So I set out to wait and boy was it a long wait! I was told my bus number was 2000 and it never turned up. All of Sangita travels’ buses were delayed by more than an hour.
While waiting for my bus I noticed that buses that had to set off at 11 PM arrived only at 11.45 or so. And my bus which was to come at 11.40 never came. A long wait of more than 1.5 hours and much fighting with the travel operator later, we were accommodated in another bus waiting at the petrol bunk(Bus number 4305, I guess). The travel operator seemed clueless as to the location of my bus. What poor logistics! Filled with passengers from both the buses we finally set out for Bangalore at around 1 AM on a Monday morning!
Our harrowing experience was not yet over. At 6.45 in the morning, all passengers were transferred to another AC Volvo(Bus number 8882) at Hosur just before the Toll gate.
Friends, I have been traveling by bus almost every other weekend over the last few months and this has been the worst experience. At least now I know which operator to avoid. The best ones to travel on the Chennai-Bangalore route are Parveen travels or KSRTC.
I have attached a photo of the Sangita Travels Bus number 3319 that I traveled by on 22nd April 2011. Pretty shocking, isn’t it?