More travellers get on the bus for Maha Kumbh as bookings soar 300 times

Travel-tech platform Ixigo's Aloke Bajpai during the company's December quarter earnings call late last month had pointed out that bus travel was seeing an increase due to the ongoing Maha Kumbh.

With flight travel becoming even more expensive for the biggest religious event and the perennial problem of train bookings, buses became the only option for hundreds of thousands of Indians every single day, he had said, adding that the platform had recorded a 14 times year-on-year (YoY) increase for bus bookings.

On Ixigo's AbhiBus, bus bookings to Prayagraj surged 76 times from January 1 to February 18, 2025.

On Day 1 of Maha Kumbh mela 2025, bookings to the Sangam city saw a 220 percent increase compared to the city’s overall bus bookings during the festive season in October last year.

redBus said it saw a massive 35 times growth in seat bookings to Prayagraj and a 19 times surge for bus tickets to overall travel to Uttar Pradesh.

Another bus platform IntrCity SmartBus recorded a surge in travel to Prayagraj, with bookings soaring 300 percent above the usual levels, driven by key bathing dates like Paush Purnima (January 24), Mauni Amavasya (January 29) and Basant Panchami (February 3).

Sanjay Jadoun, Chief Executive Officer, YoloBus recorded a 200 percent surge in bus travel demand for Maha Kumbh 2025 compared to usual bookings.

Young crowd

"It’s interesting to see strong participation from young travellers, who make up 26 percent of bookings," said Rohit Sharma, chief operating officer (COO), AbhiBus.

According to redBus data, 21 to 30-year-olds have accounted for 38 percent of the total bus bookings on the platform while Gen Z or travellers under 25 age made up for 26 percent of the bookings. The age group of 41-60 years contributed to 30 percent of the bookings.

For IntrCity, most of the bookings have been bulk bookings, primarily from families with 56 percent of them being first-time travelers.

“This year's Maha Kumbh Mela puts extraordinary pressure on transportation systems. Our analysis indicates that bus transport between Delhi and Prayagraj spiked by 648 percent in January alone," said Vijeta Soni, Co-founder and CEO of Sciative Solutions, a deep tech start-up focused on AI-driven solutions for hospitality and transportation verticals.

Top routes

A majority of passengers to Prayagraj are coming from Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand, apart from travellers in Uttar Pradesh, according to redBus data.

Compared to the usual traffic in December, Bihar and Jharkhand saw a whopping 500 times growth in seat booking while Maharashtra recorded a 25 times increase in seat bookings. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have shown 18 times growth and Delhi has seen 13 times growth in seat bookings.

The preference for bus travel for Maha Kumbh reflects in the bookings recorded for long distance routes from source markets like Coimbatore, Mysuru, Chennai, emphasizing the pan-India allure of the Kumbh Mela, drawing pilgrims from across the country.

Telangana has seen a 70 times growth in seat bookings, compared to December. Among the longest and most popular bus routes to Prayagraj, the Coimbatore-Prayagraj route covers a distance of 2,053 km. Other notable long-distance routes include Mysuru-Prayagrag with a distance of 1,879 kilometers (km), Chennai-Prayagraj(1,763 km), Goa-Prayagraj (1,746 km) and Bengaluru-Prayagraj (1,730 km).

"For the Hyderabad to Prayagraj route alone, we are receiving over 300 bookings daily, while bookings from other locations exceed 500 per day. This number increases 1.5 times on weekends, with demand expected to peak as we approach to Maha Kumbh closing date," Jadoun said.

Delhi and Hyderabad are among the top routes for AbhiBus, accounting for 18 percent and 13 percent of total bookings respectively.

Soni noted that to meet the growing demand to attend Maha Kumbh the number of unique bus routes were increased from the initial 322 bus routes to 1,611 bus routes by January 2025 from Bharatpur, Delhi, Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Lucknow and Shahdol to Prayagraj.

New routes introduced for Maha Kumbh included Chandigarh–Prayagraj, Ludhiana–Prayagraj, and Mohali–Prayagraj in January this year.

"Data shows significant improvements in bus transport since Kumbh began with a 378 percent greater supply level than before the event," he added.

The total number of schedules saw a 4 times increase from November 2024 to January 2025, Sciative data showed.

"Approximately 600,000 people are traveling to Prayagraj daily through the overall private bus market. This scale highlights the significant role of buses in managing the massive flow of pilgrims to Maha Kumbh," Soni said.

Buses are the backbone of Maha Kumbh travel, contributing to 80-90 percent of the total transport movement for pilgrims, said Jadoun.