In Kerala: Journey from Potta to Trivandrum: Nine Hours Traveling Cattle Class in a State Transport Bus

Friday, July 24, 2026

Journey from Potta to Trivandrum: Nine Hours Traveling Cattle Class in a State Transport Bus

Today was the day our Retreat ended. After the daily rude awakening, followed by prayer (which I skipped so that I could do my packing) and the hour-long lecture (which I also skipped because frankly, I’d had enough), we had our last breakfast in the communal hall. The next session was touted as very important and so we attended it. It would be the last session we would attend—Praise and Worship for half an hour followed by an hour-long lecture. The rest of the morning plodded along in the main Vincentian Hall. It was supposed to be an Anointing Session, but we could not wait for it.

We had a bus scheduled to leave at 12. 15 pm from Challakudy Bus Depot (according to the website of the Kerala State Transport Corporation—KSTC) –so we had requested Joy from the Reception Desk to order us a Taxi at 11. 45 am. We said our last goodbyes to our friends, old and new, and left to return to our room for last-minute packing and to bring our bags down. We were off to spend the next 3 days in southern Kerala while the rest of our group would be returning to Bombay.

A Most Unusual Journey by Bus:

Our taxi did arrive on time at 11. 45 am and off we went to Challakudy Bus Depot hoping to catch the 12. 15 pm bus from there to Trivandrum. Imagine our irritation when we discovered that all the information on the website is outdated or incorrect. There were no buses to Trivandrum from Challakuddy—they went along some bypass and did not stop at the bus deport there! With great language difficultly, we were informed that we would need to take a bus to Ammangeli. This was a half hour run and the bus was expected to call in to Challakudy in a half hour. This left us enough time to pick up a few dry snacks (vadas) and get a fruit juice for lunch at a shabby snack stall before the bus arrived and we boarded it. We were quite the objects of curiosity on the bus as it was obvious no one had ever seen passengers like us using such a pedestrian form of transport. We had expected to get an AC bus with reclining seats, free WIFI. etc. Well, let me tell you, it was an ancient vehicle used as commuter transport. No one going long-distance took those buses. A lady on the bus asked me (in sign language) where we were from and I told her New York because if I had said Bombay, she’d have thought that was an alien planet. And so, paying Rs. 25 per seat, we arrived at Ammangeli.

At Ammangeli, we were told that the AC bus to Trivandrum would arrive at 3.00 pm. It was not even 1.00 pm then and we did not wish to wait for another two hours in that one-horse town with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Hence, we opted to take another state transport bus that was equally pedestrian as the one we’d taken earlier—only this time, we’d be on the bus for nine hours!!!! After waiting for anther half an hour, our bus arrived. We climbed on to it, stashed our baggage in front near the driver’s seat and settled down into two seats far away from each other. Believe me, we were squeezed into seats so narrow it would be hard to accommodate anyone more than 100 pounds in weight. Using sign language again and making many requests, I managed to get us seats together at the very start of the ride. We stayed in that position until night fell and we arrived at our destination—the capital city of Kerala, Trivandrum.

En route, we passed through the entire coastal rib of Kerala. As we are in the monsoon season, everything is clean, green and fresh. We passed by the city of Allepey where we caught fabulous glimpses of the last of the backwaters filled with river craft for which Kerala is famed. We also passed glitzy gold and diamond showrooms and we realized that no matter now dusty the town or how tiny, there are gold shops galore to tempt the buyer. Kerala is obviously a far more wealthy state than West Bengal through which we had driven in May and which is decrepit, to say the least.

We also passed through the town called Kollam and only when we were passing through its obvious prosperity did it occur to me that it was the city formerly known as Quilon. I was excited as my cousin’s late husband had hailed from that town and I was very familiar with the name. Anyway…passengers came and went and as we made our way closer to Trivandrum, the bus became like a commuter van with dozens of folks getting on and off and many standees crowding the gangway. At many stops, we had left our seats to stretch our limbs (Llew even used a restroom at one stop but it was not something I was even interested in doing as I could just imagine how ghastly it would be). So I basically did not use the toilet until we eventually got to our hotel!

And get to our hotel, we did. Upon arrival at Trivandrum, we called for an Uber car and we were deposited at our hotel, ‘Ramas Garden’, where we reached at about 10.00 pm. We had called the hotel and told them that we would be checking in later than notified. We found a lovely Receptionist called Harnik (Honey) waiting for us and within minutes, he gave us our room key on the first floor and saw us into our rooms. It was not even fifteen minutes later that we used the bathroom, brushed and flossed our teeth and fell asleep in the amazingly comfortable bed.

And so that was our big adventure story of our trip to Kerala. Yes, it is true that you can only see India by bus and you can only mingle with the common people when you choose this form of transport. We found everyone extraordinarily kind and gracious towards us—almost protective. The people of the South of India are so refined, so cultured, so extraordinarily nice. It made all the discomfort of the trip worth it.

Until tomorrow…cheerio.