Happened to travel from Chennai to Coimbatore to attend my nephew's wedding last week and thought I would record my experiences here.
We took Spice Jet from Chennai to Coimbatore. The ticket fare was for hand luggage only and the four of us (me, wife, my dad, my 5-yr old son) all comfortably took all we wanted in hand luggage itself. The weight restriction is 7 kg per person for one piece of luggage, plus 2 kg allowance for laptop bag, hand bag, or some small luggage. The flight was little more than an hour. Once we landed in Coimbatore, I tried to take a prepaid taxi to Kavundam Palayam, which is where our hotel was booked. The prepaid taxi rate was Rs. 600, which I thought was very expensive. So I enquired around and found the number for another taxi service, phone number 0422 6060 303. This cab service is called VK-CABBIE or something and costed us only 330. So this was a wise choice. Later I heard from others that there is something called red taxi, which is even less expensive.
Our hotel was Balu hotel on Mettupalayam road. It was about 1 km towards kavundam palayam signal from Ooty bus stand on mettu palayam road. The hotel was quite mediocre. It has a bar attached to it and if you happen to stay in one of the rooms close to the hotel reception, then cigarette smoke at night is going to suffocate you. Also all the rooms are smoking rooms, so if you travel with kids or hate passive smoking like me, then avoid this hotel. Avoid using the water bottle they provide. It is not a new one; they just fill water and keep it full and it looks exactly like a new bottle, until you open it and realize the seal is broken. The toilets were not cleaned properly. But there were some advantages. There is a coffee/tea shop just downstairs so we could satisfy our caffeine addiction twice a day. There is also a medical shop in the same building and we had to buy a lot of medicines, so that was quite convenient.
The wedding was in Kalpana Kalyana Mandapam. The wedding hall was nice and big, but then the construction of hand wash and the dining hall was just plain stupid. You have to get down half a floor for the handwash and then several steep steps to go down to the dining hall. Lot of old folks had a tough time and even normal people had to be careful when using the steep steps.
The food was catered by Malamurthy catering and was excellent. All the items were really good and I did not find a single item that was bad. This is really rare in India and I would consider it as a highlight of our whole trip.
Return trip was by IndiGo and we had check-in allowance, so checked in our suitcases. Once we landed in Chennai, we took fast track prepaid taxi. There was a guy with fast track uniform who took our luggage as soon as we stepped out of the airport with the fast track bill. I thought he was the driver. He was walking too fast for us, so I had to rush up to make sure he is not stealing something from our luggage! Only when he loaded our luggage to the taxi, the driver guy came and this guy stood next to me and said "Sir, thank you, sir" and looked like a drooling dog... I realized this guy just wants some money for pushing our super light cart for a couple of hundred feet. This is just plain cheating from fast track. I told him how I was taken for a ride by him and gave him 20 rupees. Not sure why fast track has to do this. In retrospect, I should have just used Ola cabs or Uber for airport pickup. Prepaid taxis have become a rip off in Chennai airport and Chennai Central and I hope the competition just eats them alive and they go out of business soon.
We took Spice Jet from Chennai to Coimbatore. The ticket fare was for hand luggage only and the four of us (me, wife, my dad, my 5-yr old son) all comfortably took all we wanted in hand luggage itself. The weight restriction is 7 kg per person for one piece of luggage, plus 2 kg allowance for laptop bag, hand bag, or some small luggage. The flight was little more than an hour. Once we landed in Coimbatore, I tried to take a prepaid taxi to Kavundam Palayam, which is where our hotel was booked. The prepaid taxi rate was Rs. 600, which I thought was very expensive. So I enquired around and found the number for another taxi service, phone number 0422 6060 303. This cab service is called VK-CABBIE or something and costed us only 330. So this was a wise choice. Later I heard from others that there is something called red taxi, which is even less expensive.
Our hotel was Balu hotel on Mettupalayam road. It was about 1 km towards kavundam palayam signal from Ooty bus stand on mettu palayam road. The hotel was quite mediocre. It has a bar attached to it and if you happen to stay in one of the rooms close to the hotel reception, then cigarette smoke at night is going to suffocate you. Also all the rooms are smoking rooms, so if you travel with kids or hate passive smoking like me, then avoid this hotel. Avoid using the water bottle they provide. It is not a new one; they just fill water and keep it full and it looks exactly like a new bottle, until you open it and realize the seal is broken. The toilets were not cleaned properly. But there were some advantages. There is a coffee/tea shop just downstairs so we could satisfy our caffeine addiction twice a day. There is also a medical shop in the same building and we had to buy a lot of medicines, so that was quite convenient.
The wedding was in Kalpana Kalyana Mandapam. The wedding hall was nice and big, but then the construction of hand wash and the dining hall was just plain stupid. You have to get down half a floor for the handwash and then several steep steps to go down to the dining hall. Lot of old folks had a tough time and even normal people had to be careful when using the steep steps.
The food was catered by Malamurthy catering and was excellent. All the items were really good and I did not find a single item that was bad. This is really rare in India and I would consider it as a highlight of our whole trip.
Return trip was by IndiGo and we had check-in allowance, so checked in our suitcases. Once we landed in Chennai, we took fast track prepaid taxi. There was a guy with fast track uniform who took our luggage as soon as we stepped out of the airport with the fast track bill. I thought he was the driver. He was walking too fast for us, so I had to rush up to make sure he is not stealing something from our luggage! Only when he loaded our luggage to the taxi, the driver guy came and this guy stood next to me and said "Sir, thank you, sir" and looked like a drooling dog... I realized this guy just wants some money for pushing our super light cart for a couple of hundred feet. This is just plain cheating from fast track. I told him how I was taken for a ride by him and gave him 20 rupees. Not sure why fast track has to do this. In retrospect, I should have just used Ola cabs or Uber for airport pickup. Prepaid taxis have become a rip off in Chennai airport and Chennai Central and I hope the competition just eats them alive and they go out of business soon.
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