Ondhu Foodie Travels

When you start to plan a trip, you will start looking at options that help you in terms of comfort, budget, and your fun quotient. After a lot of searching around, me and my friends found the best way to go to Maldives was not via Bengaluru, but from Kochi. Direct flights from Bengaluru to Maldives started around 16,000 INR a person at this point of time.

Due to the high pricing, we figured Kochi to Male is far more affordable than from Bengaluru. So, without hesitating we booked our tickets from Kochi to Bengaluru. Make My Trip was the best portal offering the best prices at that period and we went ahead and booked our return journey flight, it costed us 8,670 INR per person for the journey from Kochi to Male and back to Kochi. This price was half the price we had to pay compared to the Bengaluru prices.

For our transportation from Bengaluru to Kochi, we initially had the idea of travelling by bus thus saving us a lot more but due to last minute unpreparedness from us we had to book a flight. So, once again after searching for all the options, Yatra was the best portal which offered us a return journey price of 5,500 INR per person. All in all, our total flight charge came up to 14,170 INR per person, saving us 2,000 INR at the end. The savings would have been much more had we planned our bus journey properly, a lesson learnt on not to repeat the same mistake again.

Our journey from Bengaluru to Kochi was a lot more smooth than we had expected. With the new addition of self Check-In process we surely did not spend much time getting our boarding passes printed out and checking in our luggage with absolute ease. The KIA is one place where something new would pop up, making lives of travelers a lot more easy.

The waiting time at Kochi was not all that bad, we did get a small nap here and there, had our midnight snack in the airport premises itself. The Kochi International terminal is well kept and maintained professionally. The security let us in 4 hours prior to our flight time and we went to the seating area and took a small nap. The Check-In process was quick, everything was done in a smooth manner without questioning us much in the process and next thing we were ready to board our flight to Maldives.

The journey was beautiful, considering it was an early morning flight, we could see clear skies, amazing cloud sequences, and beautiful rays of sunlight. There was lot of turbulence I would say, mainly because of rainy weather that was just exiting the Maldives during the first week of October. We landed in Velana International Airport and I must say, looking at the islands from above was mesmerizing, I don’t think this sight would be something I can revisit many times but will surely treasure this for years to come.