More tools for domestic travel

Following up on my year-old post, I shall recommend three tools that are very promising.

Ixigo (http://www.ixigo.com)  has been introducing several cool features, the latest being a comparison with OTAs like cleartrip. It is an innovation in the Indian travel space and one which I very much like, though I have seen it on kayak.com Another great feature is its anywhere to anywhere connectivity, connecting smaller towns also. The interface is also slick. It is definitely the best aggregator for Indian flights.

90DI Travel (http://www.90di.com/travel/index.html)  includes trains and flights in its routes. I recently searched for a Bangalore to Kannur route and found good suggestions. On an aside, I’ve been planning to see Maniratnam-famous Kannur and Fort Bekal for a long time now and I’d be getting to see it next year. Trains are my favourite mode of travel. Hats off to the team for providing train route search on selected days in a simple and easy manner! They say the fare and seat availability is real-time.

IndiaGroove (http://indiagroove.com/trains/train_finder/search) is a good trainfinder site. If only the Indian Railways site is as intuitive and easy to use! In its beta, IndiaGroove only has trains, but is very effective, though outdated. It allows you to search for all the days in the week and also with layovers upto 24 hours. My Bangalore to Kannur/Cannanore train search gives me good results (not the latest schedules though), which I was not able to get easily from the Indian Rail site.

PS: Later I chanced upon a thread in Indiamike, which lists a few more train search sites.