Way back in 2005, I made this wonderful journey from Hyderabad to Pondicherry by bus. What’s going to come is not for the faint hearted so try it if you really are in the mood to travel.

Nov. 2005, It was Deepavali and I had shifted to hyd only 3 months ago. I was terribly home sick and had booked my train tickets to go home. However, about 2 days before my journey, unprecedented rainfall hit the Tamil Nadu- Andhra Pradesh stretch. Rainfall in India is a strange thing all together. Either you don’t get it  or you get it in bucket loads. And this particular one was nasty. A depression in the Bay of Bengal literally made the land – water. Flash floods washed away rail tracks and the roads were a mess. The day before my scheduled departure, the railways contacted me and refunded my ticket fare. Apparently, the tracks were no more and the trains were cancelled. And this kicked of my desperation.

I went to the bus station (CBT, Hyderbad) and checked out everything there was available. No luck all buses were either full or cancelled. Pondicherry being a small town, there were nothing direct from Hyderabad. A distance of 700 Kms Separated the destination from point of departure. I camped in the bus stand overnight and hit the counters early next day and i got a ticket, the very last seat in a night bus to chittoor.

Chittoor is located on the AP side of Tamil Nadu (TN) – Andhra Pradesh (AP) border. The bus left Hyderbad at 9 PM. the road was slush and the ride terrible. Some where in between the bus broke down. 3 hours later it set out again. 8 AM, the next day saw me on the deserted bus stand of Chittoor. My next destination was Vellore. Vellore is like Chittoor on the TN – AP border but on the TN side of it.

From Vellore I hopped and jumped 4 buses. Vellore to Arani , Arani to Vandavasi , Vandavasi to Tindivanam, Tindivanam to Pondicherry.  At 1 PM on the second day, I was back at home sweet home.