Kochi: Giving fresh hope for regular trips to Chennai, the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has announced daily services to the neighbouring state capital during the upcoming Sabarimala pilgrimage season.
"This season, we'll operate services connecting Pamba to Chennai and also a daily service from Thiruvananthapuram to Chennai. The latter will be operated using the multi-axle Scania buses while the former will be a Super Deluxe one," said a senior KSRTC official.
The one from Thiruvananthapuram will start from Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple at 6.30 pm daily and the return service too will start at 6.30 pm.
The official said the corporation is at "final stages" of holding talks with their Tamil Nadu counterpart State Express Transport Corporation.
"We're hopeful of starting regular services to various destinations in the neighbouring state by the start of next year. The inter-state reciprocal transport agreement with Tamil Nadu is close to be clinched and only ministerial-level talks are pending. "We've doled out a direction to main centres such as Ernakulam asking the depot in-charge to identify profitable routes from there to destinations in Tamil Nadu for running new services. The same will be complied and new services will be started based on demand and the wet-lease buses taken from Scania will be used," he said.
Meanwhile, the corporation will conduct services from Pamba to seven inter-state destinations including Bangalore, Tenkasi, Kanyakumari, Madurai, Coimbatore, Thenkasi and Chennai.
"The Sabarimala special services will start operating from November 14, two days prior to the start of the pilgrimage season," the official said.
