It was 5:30 AM in the morning when I entered the Bangalore City Railway Station and saw a Bangalore-Chennai train parked on Platform 1. It couldn’t have been better, right? Wrong! That was not my train – the Shatabadi – and I like a jerk kept looking for my coach without realizing that it was some other train. When I did figure that, I had difficulty locating where the Shatabadi was parked, since the display unit showed the wrong platform number! I had to almost run for a couple of hundred meters to be on time. Of course I was cursing, and yeah panting as well!

But as soon as I entered Shatabadi (Executive Class), I knew all the reasons for cursing were over. The seats looked pretty decent – upholstery was quite OK and the leg room – as good/better than business class!  The servers carried a warm  smile on their face accompanied by several rounds of goodies – water, candies, tea/coffee, corn flakes, veg/non-veg breakfast and tea/coffee, and I promise the cutlery was definitely very decent as well!

Cutting a long story short, below are the 3 reasons why Banaglore-Chennai Shatabadi rocks (over a flight):

1. Save Money. An executive class ticket on Shatabadi comes for around Rs 1000. An air ticket will not cost anything less than Rs 4000 one way for economy class. That makes it a cool saving of Rs 6,000 on a round trip without compromising on the total travel time or comfort.
2. Spend more time traveling to Chennai rather than traveling IN Bangalore. Shatabadi takes 5 hours, from station to station. Add an hour max for travel to railway station, locating your platform etc. That mkes it 6 hours (>85% time traveling TO Chennai). Here’s the typical time you’ll take if you fly:
   • Travel to the Bangalore airport: 90 mins
   • Check-in and Boarding:60 mins
   • Flying Time: 40 mins
   • Congestion Time (since it happens almost always): 20 mins
   • Baggage Claim at Chennai: 20 mins
   • Total Time: ~4hrs (>80% of time spent traveling IN Bangalore).
3. Get better service (compared to economy air). Have you even heard of leg room in economy airfare?

You need more reasons, huh?!