BENGALURU: With Indian Railways still not running at its full pre-Covid capacity, online ticketing platform redBus saw bookings begin two weeks before Diwali which falls on November 14.
About 60% of bookings are for intra-state travel, and the rest are for interstate travel. About 58% of bookings have been made for air-conditioned buses. The top five states from which the platform is witnessing high demand are Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.
Over 1,900 private bus operators and 17 state regional transport corporations are gearing up to cater to the festive season by running around 40,000 daily services which will transport an estimated 39 lakh passengers across a cumulative distance of 47 crore km during Diwali week.The top three routes from Karnataka are Bengaluru-Hyderabad, Bengaluru-Kalaburagi, and Bengaluru-Vijayapura.
The shortest intercity bus route booked in the country is between Guwahati and Machkhowa in Assam, covering a distance of 4.9 km in 20 minutes and the longest is between Jodhpur (Rajasthan) and Mysuru (Karnataka), covering a distance of 1,965 km in 38 hours.Popular train routes elsewhere in the country include Patna-Kolkata, Ballia-Lucknow, Palasa-Visakhapatnam, Berhampore-Kolkata and Bhubaneswar-Kolkata.