Chennai: They say, “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” Well, in Tamil Nadu, cometh a festival, cometh the omni buses. Yes. The country’s biggest festival is a fortnight away and omni buses have already started making a killing. It looks like traveling in buses connecting the city to far off towns in southern and western Tamil Nadu on Deepavali eve might cost king’s ransom this time too.
Tickets in some AC, non-AC sleeper class and semi sleeper class buses are being sold at twice the normal fare easily. For instance, AC semi-sleeper tickets in Coimbatore-Chennai overnight buses are selling in the range of Rs 800 to Rs 2,100. A reputed travel agency, which mostly operates buses connecting the four southern states, has priced a Chennai-Coimbatore AC semi-sleeper ticket at Rs 2,100 the day before Deepavali.
Strangely, a Salem based prominent omni bus operator has priced Ac sleeper ticket at Rs 1,550, at least a few hundreds more than the normal price. Even non-AC semi sleeper buses connecting the capital to the textile town in the west is going at Rs 700 per ticket. In terms of southern districts, the less said the better. For, the going rate is above Rs 1,200 for Tirunelveli bound AC semi sleeper buses from the city on the day before Deepavali. The price quoted for a sleeper class ticket in online ticket booking portal www.rebbus.in was Rs 1,400 plus. Tickets in buses departing mid noon or early evening and reaching the destination around midnight were priced a couple of hundreds less than the one’s that started late evening from Chennai and reached the tier two towns before dawn break.
