India travel: bus or train?
 

Our itinerary for a planned south India trip in Feb and March includes Goa, Hampi,Ooty, Cochin, Kerala backwaters and Varkala. I've been looking at bus and rail travel alternatives: does travel by bus/rail depend on the area or is rail generally better than bus?
Also finding it difficult using the India rail website to search trips between locations as they want train #'s or the names of larger cities. any alternative websites?

Rail if there's a train. Safer and smoother. Or you can consider a car and driver - it's not as expensive as you might expect. There's a train between Goa and Hospet (for Hampi) and Goa and Kochi and Kochi and Varkala. Ooty there's a "toy" train but it doesn't fit well with the other places you list. You're looking at night trains for some of this, too.

The Indrail site will give you trains for lesser cities - there's an option on the "Trains between important places" page, but you can also use cleartrip.com.

Either take trains or get a car & driver. Buses should absolutely be a last resort. You'll understand once you get there and see buses on the roads. I very quickly dropped all my naive plans for bus travel after arriving in India and went by car.

Hiring a car and driver is very easily done (through your hotel or any travel agency in India) and generally runs between $40-$60 a day. With a driver, you have total freedom to go wherever you want and to stop at will. It's also convenient to fill in gaps in the rail network.

The local busses are a no-no. You CAN take a bus if it's the luxury tour style bus.

Generally, if the car ride is more than 2 hours, I start looking at trains. Indian roads can be exhausting and bone jarringly bumpy.

https://www.irctc.co.in/ - Indian Railways tourist side

Rail is typicaly better for long rides than bus, although they can be frustrating. Not all buses are horrible. As long as it's the "A/C Volvo" kind, it's fine for short journeys under 3 hours. If you don't mind spending the extra money, car/driver is always a great bet. When you get into a new city, you can ask a prepaid taxi counter for their rate to your next destination, which is probably significantly less than what your hotel will quote you.

https://www.irctc.co.in/ - Indian Railways tourist side

Rail is typicaly better for long rides than bus, although they can be frustrating. Not all buses are horrible. As long as it's the "A/C Volvo" kind, it's fine for short journeys under 3 hours. If you don't mind spending the extra money, car/driver is always a great bet. When you get into a new city, you can ask a prepaid taxi counter for their rate to your next destination, which is probably significantly less than what your hotel will quote you.

Always make sure your driver speaks a decent amount of English and is familiar with the area he will be driving you. Don't let them drive fast or reckless, otherwise change drivers if you're comfortable with their driving skills.

Don't drive after dark. Indian roads are not conducive to safe night time travel.

irctc.co.in no longer accepts non-Indian credit cards, so is off the radar for us visitors to India.

Instead, use a private Indian rail tickets retailing website called www.cleartrip.com which is easier to use, accepts non-Indian cards, and charges a fee on top of the actual ticket price that's peanuts, about $1 as I recall.

It should be able to list all stations, but like irctc.co.in won't do complex journeys requiring connections, only direct trains. So a calcutta to darjeeling trip needs to be booked as Calcutta to New Jalpaiguri, then NJP to darjeeling, for example.

irctc.co.in no longer accepts non-Indian credit cards, so is off the radar for us visitors to India.

Instead, use a private Indian rail tickets retailing website called www.cleartrip.com which is easier to use, accepts non-Indian cards, and charges a fee on top of the actual ticket price that's peanuts, about $1 as I recall.

It should be able to list all stations, but like irctc.co.in won't do complex journeys requiring connections, only direct trains. So a calcutta to darjeeling trip needs to be booked as Calcutta to New Jalpaiguri, then NJP to darjeeling, for example.

From what you have stated, Goa - Hampi by train. Nearest station to Hampi is a place called Hospet. You can search for Madgaon to Hospet trains at Cleartrip.com and book.
Hampi to Ooty is too much of a bother. No direct trains. I will suggest you take a train to Bangalore from Hospet. From Bangalore, hire a cab to Ooty. The travel is via Mysore and Bandipur - Places you should consider to add to tour itinerary.

From Ooty, take a taxi to Coimbatore and then take a train to Trivandrum. For journey within Kerala, taxis are best.

To add to what Jaya said above...also make sure there are seatbelts.
In our taxi from Cochin airport, there were none. instead of getting out then (we were too tired after a long plane trip , and just wanted to get to our destination) we waited to say something until end of the trip. The drive, who barely spoke English, looked surprised that we cared!
Trust me, after a few minutes on the road, you'll understand why we cared! Unfortunately, there are still raxis without seat belts or well-treaded tires!

p.s. I agre with those above-tippecano, thursday, and jen- who recommend you at least check out cost of hiring a car and driver. While it may seem a luxury to do so in your native country (wherever that is), it is not uncommon in India.

Dav, below is a thread with info and photos about trains. Some booking info might be out of date (see Seat 61's info, above) but the photos are quite accurate. There are loads of posts about trains, etc, on Indiamike, a forum which specialized in info about...you guessed it..India

http://www.indiamike.com/india-artic...-indian-train/