Moderate rains and the noisy music from Ganpati Mandals mark the end of a marvellous week long journey to the south. At this juncture, it is a pleasure to present before you some tidbits from the journey and the Travelogues!

We (My parents & Myself) left Mumbai on 19-August-2006 by the 1081 Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus - Cape Kanyakumari Express. This was my first journey by this train, and was pretty excited. We joined the train at Dadar, and alighted at Changanacherry. The locos that worked this train were WCG2 #20157 from Kalyan (CSTM to PUNE), WDM2A #17770 from Kazipet (PUNE to KPD), WAP4 #22340 from Erode (KPD to ERN) and WDM2 #18485 from Erode (ERN to CAPE). The coach was WGACCN CR 03106A based at Mumbai CST. The train reached our desination delayed by 19 minutes. Overall the journey was interesting. The pantry gets a 8/10. The service was superb. Some areas where they could improve is: bettering the serve size, increasing the variety of snacks served and a few other points.

We got down at Changanacherry and proceeded to my Mom's place (at Nedumudy, Alappuzha District) about 2o kms from the station by car. We later went to Kondungallur (Thrisur district) by Car. We attended a wedding on August 26 at Angamali and then returned on the same day to Mumbai.

The return was by 6346 Trivandrum Central - Lokmanya Tilak Terminus Netravati Express. We joined the train at Alwaye and alighted at Panvel. The loco was WDM3A #18596 from Erode, which worked end-to-end. The coach was WGACCN SR 05144A based at Trivandrum Central. The train reached our destination delayed by an hour and 30 minutes. The coach was ill-maintained. There was no water between Alwaye and Kankanadi owing to some problems in the water pump which could not be rectified by the coach attendants or by the C&W staff at Shoranur or Kannur. The pantry gets a 5/10. The service has deteriorated a lot since my last travel. The lunch was OK while the dinner was awful.

The trip reports are ready for reading. The links for the same are on the left side of this page.