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Sunday, November 8, 2009

Sharma Volvo B9R : Bangalore to Mumbai route experience

After taking the VRL volvo to Davangere on the 5th (READ HERE), I took the Sharma B9R back to Pune on the 8th November. Again the seat was booked online and though yet again Redbus mentioned boarding time at 8pm, the bus arrived in Davanagere at 9:15pm. I had pre-called the Sharma agent in Davanagere and he had confirmed the time as 9:30pm. Fair enough. But to my dismay, the bus ended up taking a 45min dinner break in Davangere at left only at 10:15pm. But this was just the starting. After crossing Haveri, at the first toll naka, the bus waited for a good 20min for another Sharma Volvo coming from Mumbai side to give that bus a spare tyre. We were already running well behind schedule. After Hubli though, the driver did try making up for the lost time as my GPS showed true speeds to be around 95km/h (100+ on the speedo) with short bursts to 105km/h or so .

The bus' condition was very good - smooth and silent. I was lapping the bus' speed : till the time we stopped for breakfast at Natraj (shivpuri), the bus covered 235km in 174mins : avg speed of 80km/h! Brilliant. However, the breakfast break turned out to be a 45min break. Two KSRTC Volvos which came after us, left before us! I was finally dropped off at Katraj bypass at8pm : thats a journey time of almost 10hrs as compared to 8.5hrs the VRL volvo took 3 days back. This is really not encourgaing and i might just stop using Sharma Volvo from next time onwards.

Click HERE to book tickets on this bus now

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are so lucky because redbus.in worked for you. There are lot of complaints over redbus site as they are providing fake bus timings and operators (check mouthshut.com & complaintsboard.com). I am a frequent user of omni buses and let me explain some of the incidents happening related to redbus.in
for example,
1. just select chennai to bangalore, it will show you the list as bharathi travels 10:00 am, shama sardar 1015 am and all. Actually there is only one operator at 11:00 am that is seabird tourists which is not mentioned in redbus.[leaving kpn]They were actually interlinked.
2. On the other side, select bangalore to chennai it will show you national travels 0200 pm, shama sardar 0230 pm etc. it is all FALSE, only sharma operates 2+1 volvo around 0300 pm from majestic circle. Again operational partnership.
3. they will say you kallada starts at 09:00 pm from bangalore to chennai, but you can see kallada volvo at 11:00 pm near madiwala shouting for passengers.
The list goes on like this but it is only an example, There are also many worst incidents happening to passengers at chennai omni bus stand.
So Passengers kindly beware of third party websites as well as travel agents.

Unknown said...

U CANT EVEN TRUST ANY ONE BUT SAME COMPANY WEB SITE WE CAN TRUST AND I FEEL BETTER TO BOOK FROM AUTHORISED PERSON AND TRAVEL WITH OUT ANY PROBLEM

Bunny Punia said...

anonymous: I have used Redbus lot of times, but only on this route (Pune-Bangalore). As i am aware of all the operators and their timings, i have had no issues with redbus till now. for example, i wanted to take the multiaxle B9R back to Pune and as Redbus offers Rs 50 cashback for HDFC customers, i used Redbus and so on.

sayed: Well, not always. Anyways, i will speak to Redbus and pester them to try replying back here once

The Ignoramus said...

Sharma Volve sucks.. I booked a B9R between Bangalore and Chennai and back on two successive nights.. on both occasions, the bus left 30-40 minutes late. The driver and 'cleaner' were the same on both occasions, and both were constantly talking, and listening to music at high volumes. Worse, they stopped a dozen times in between, and took 6.5 hours totally to cover the distance from Bangalore to Chennai, when KSRTC volvos usually cover the distance much faster, with no noise from chatter or music.

Complete thumbs down!

jose said...

Am having the worst experince with Sharma Volvo B7R.Am a usual traveller from kottayam to bangalore.I took a ticket from kottayam with bording point ettumanoor. I was told that the bus will arrive by 5.15.I reached the pick up by 5.00.It started raining also.The bus came there by 6.30.I showed the ticket to them and they told that this is for the bus comming behind.Then i entered the second bus and the seat number alloted to me is 34.But they gave me another seat(No:27).I took 2 hours to reach muvattupuzha while ordinary KSRTC buses will take 1 hpur to reach.then by morning 3.30 at omllur this got break down and they put all of us into another B7R comming behind this.we all went standing till Hosur.From hosur they changed us into an ordinary bus.At last we reached madivala by 9 insted of 5.

Anonymous said...

Sharma VOLVO sucks !!
i had travelled in sharma VOLVO between the routes of HYD-BLR, really itz a worse xperience.. Better choose Diwakar,APSRTC garuda, KSRTC Airavath in between the routes... u can go fro Dhanunjeya also.....