[tharian]

Originally Posted by Chris C

Does anybody know what happened with Olivea Travels. They seems to completely shut up shop in Bangalore and their website doesnt show trips after mar 2013 but make my trip is still listing them as operating which is odd.

If I remember right, they re-named to Luxuria and their office is located on 80ft Road in Koramangla soon after the Sony World signal. And I saw their double axle Volvo recently as well.
Quite sure they are still running.

Regards

[audioholic]

Wasnt it the other way round? It was first Luxuria, then Luxury travels and finally olivea? Currently, from what I gathered off their website, they are doing Bangalore-Tirupathi-Bangalore tour packages daily. Again, the packages are not available for booking. Did they have multiple buses? Even the Tirupati package costs too high. Similar packages offered by other operators fall in the range of Rs. 1800 for a Multi-Axle volvo.

[tharian]

Yes it looks like it is the other way round from what i stated. Their office and website are active though.
I remember their double axle DC designed volvo parked outside.

[TheARUN]

The Olivia website does not let you book a seat. I'm sure there is something tricky, all pointers lead to them having stopped operations. Even the route map they have on the site shows them running busses all over India, while what they actually do is just run busses down south

They must have gone into a charter bus mode where they are renting the busses out for marriages. The busses being so niche are going to find it tough to get buyers even if sold second-hand

Don't know what went wrong. It was a brilliant idea when they started, their project report could have convinced any banker or venture capitalist to invest in them, but now, either they were too early for the market or they were unable to operate efficiently

[masin4]

Originally Posted by TheARUN

The Olivia website does not let you book a seat. I'm sure there is something tricky, all pointers lead to them having stopped operations. Even the route map they have on the site shows them running busses all over India, while what they actually do is just run busses down south

They must have gone into a charter bus mode where they are renting the busses out for marriages. The busses being so niche are going to find it tough to get buyers even if sold second-hand

Don't know what went wrong. It was a brilliant idea when they started, their project report could have convinced any banker or venture capitalist to invest in them, but now, either they were too early for the market or they were unable to operate efficiently

Having been a regular on their Hyderabad-> Bangalore sector couple of things that i can think off were the buses were ageing very badly I have traveled the first week they launched to recently in January .The bus was a rattle box to say the least and lot of the features on board were not working due to poor/bad maintenance guess DC designs are not tested long enough .Tirpuathi sector i believe was handed over to greens travels or someone to execute.The only sector that I hear they are still plying is the Bangalore to Pondicherry route .It was a good concept however execution towards the later stage left much to be desired.

[audioholic]

No offense to any DC fans, but I personally feel that DC designs are more of great lookers rather than reliable designs. Have seen a DC innova and it was not holding up well. I think the same happened to this bus too. Moreover the front of this bus is seriously ugly compared to the standard design. As said previously, sellling this bus is also a difficult thing as the number of seats will pull down offers.

[Chris C]

Originally Posted by tharian

Yes it looks like it is the other way round from what i stated. Their office and website are active though.
I remember their double axle DC designed volvo parked outside.

I went to 80 feet road office and its closedm hence my question. I have also seen lots and lots of very bad feedback in the last few months on them so i wont take them anyway. I suspect that they were going out of business and the customer service went out the window.

Also I noticed tha the picture on the website of their chennai lounge (i wanted to be bangalore to chennai) is in fact the clubhouse louge for virgin atlantic in heathrow terminal 3 and they copied the picture.

I think I will just hire a car instead!

[Flying Djinn]

I'm travelling to Thiruvanthapuram from Bangalore in 10 days and looking to book bus tickets. What's the best option amongst KPN, SRS and Kallada (G4, Suresh)?

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by Chris C

I think I will just hire a car instead!

One way travel - decent experience - take the shatabdhi. Either of them. Also try a Club class from KSRTC. This is in case you are travelling alone and one way. A taxi will charge you quite a lot compared to these.

So I guess thats curtains down for Luxury buses or Luxuria or olivia(whatever it is called)?

Anyone here knows the exact specs of the volvo 9100? If I recall, Binai had blogged about a journey in the 9100. Please share the tech specs of the bus.

[aroonanand]

Originally Posted by Flying Djinn

I'm travelling to Thiruvanthapuram from Bangalore in 10 days and looking to book bus tickets. What's the best option amongst KPN, SRS and Kallada (G4, Suresh)?

I have undertaken several trips on this sector and my recommendation would be KPN multi axle via nagercoil route. Leg space is the best as the bus has 44 seats as against 49 on other operators. SRM is also good though most of their buses go through kerala route and hence take longer. Avoid SRS at all costs. Have had very bad experience including getting stranded due to an accident 10 days back on this route. Have created a separate thread on this topic. Have not taken kallada. Bharathi is also supposed to be good but they have a reputation of cancelling buses on week days due to poor load factors.

[venkyhere]

Originally Posted by aroonanand

I have undertaken several trips on this sector and my recommendation would be KPN multi axle via nagercoil route. Leg space is the best as the bus has 44 seats as against 49 on other operators. ......

er... don't KPNs have the last row 5 seats as driver berth ? So wouldn't the 49-5=44 be because of that ? I doubt whether there is any extra legroom

[sbkumar]

Originally Posted by Flying Djinn

I'm travelling to Thiruvanthapuram from Bangalore in 10 days and looking to book bus tickets. What's the best option amongst KPN, SRS and Kallada (G4, Suresh)?

In this route ( and on most routes withinTN), if reaching the destination the next day is critical ( even with a delay) the best option is KPN. Though they rate the worst in terms of pick up timings and customer treatment, they of compensate it with their coverage. I have had mixed experiences with all operators (KPN/SRS/Kallada(Suresh)/SRM). The last couple of trips went okay with Kallada and hence based on the recent experiences I would recommend Kallada ( not their Benz sleeper though).

[TKMCE]

I'm travelling to Thiruvanthapuram from Bangalore in 10 days and looking to book bus tickets. What's the best option amongst KPN, SRS and Kallada (G4, Suresh)?

There are buses through three routes between Trivandrum and Bangalore. Avoid the route via Ernakulam Calicut and Mysore (Suresh Kallada has one service) and also avoid the one via Ernakulam Coimbatore (KPN, Suresh Kallada, G4 ,Sharma SRM and KaSRTC Airvath, Kerala SRTC B7R (more often than not) all have at least one service on this route. Instead make sure that you take the route via Tirunelveli , Salem which is the quickest route.

As "aroonanand" said KPN Is the most comfortable but the service is hit and miss. Especially if you are not leaving on a Sunday from Trivandrum, there is every chance that the services may be combined. Last I checked they had 3 B9Rs at one hour intervals on the Nagercoil route and it will be anybody's guess which service or services get cancelled. You may even end up in a (Non Volvo) AC sleeper as well which also operates on the route. So I would suggest you avoid them except on Sundays. Also the crew are mostly indifferent. Last travel on KPN, despite three heavy bags, the crew refused to put them in the storage below and insisted (no assistance given by anyone) that I put the bags inside the bus (as they wanted to use the entire luggage space for cargo). This was on the B9R from Bangalore to Trivandrum via Ernakulam . Luckily the bus was only half full so I could put the bags towards the back of the bus without too many issues.

G4 seems to get good reviews and from personal experience of my family they are OK . SRS seems to be quite bad on this particular route while there are quite a few clearly biased and sponsored reviews about Suresh Kallada floating around as well as some bad horror stories, so I guess they are mixed bag.

I would suggest SRM. Their old rash driving heroics mostly seem to have disappeared and my recent experience (on Chennai Ernakulam) was very good. Well maintained buses and very polite crew.

My vote would have gone to KaSRTC Airvath but unfortunately they don't operate via Nagercoil but via Trichur, Coimbatore so it takes a good 3-4 hours more.

[speedsatya]

Originally Posted by masin4

.The bus was a rattle box to say the least and lot of the features on board were not working due to poor/bad maintenance guess DC designs are not tested long enough .

Saw this Oliviea B9R parked outside Koramnagala police station for a couple of days.
For me personally,DC designs have always been ugly and useless.

[shineshine]

Thank god that I am alive to write this. I was traveling from Trivandrum to Chennai on 30th June and i was seated on the left window seat on 4th row. The bus started 45 mins late from Trivandrum and again halted at Nagercoil for another 30mins for filling up a few vacant seats.

After starting from Nagercoil, the driver was trying to make up the lost time. It was at Kavalkinaru, the incident happened. All the cabin lights were off and the front curtain was pulled in, so we could not know what exactly happened. All we heard is a loud bang, and the vehicle tilted towards left at an extreme angle. It continued for 2-3 secs and we felt that it's going to fall on its side. Suddenly another loud bang sound and a very sharp jerk and jump. We felt the bus had indeed fallen.

But we realised that it has not fallen and we are back on road. The bus stopped at about 100m and we all got down. We found the front left corner of wind shield was broken, the luggage compartment door and radiator grill was terribly mangled. No one had an exact idea on what happened.

On close look we found hell lot of soil inside the luggage compartment all over the luggages and a few luggages missing. The missing luggages were recovered from the spot where the bus went out of road. Since the luggage door was dangerously protruding towards outside, it was tied up inside with the help of some real manpower. The luggages were moved to another bus of the same travels but we were asked to continued on the accident bus.

Although the passenger section was intact, the windshield had severe cracks all over. I asked one of the travel office guy whether it would hold till chennai. To my surprise, he answered "Saaarrr.....volvo glass is 'UNBREAKABLE' type and it will not shatter and fall"

Although I was not convinced, I thought of taking a chance with that since they didn't had a replacement bus. Fortunately the glass holded without further damages till we reach chennai.

Although I could not infer much about the cause if this, I am sure that the belly of the bus landed pretty hard on soil and the rebound of that hit prevented it from falling on its side. The speed of the bus was surely about 90~100 and the point where it went outside was a pretty hard right curve.

Adding the pics I managed to take.