Indian Train Guide

Before we left for India we knew that we would need to take the train as one of our major forms of transportation. However, despite reading up on the way the system works in the Lonely Planet and on the Internet, I found that I still had to figure out a lot of how to work the system on the way. With that in mind I offer my guide to how to take the train in India. I obviously do not guarantee any information to be current or correct, but if you are planning on going to India I think that this post will be very useful. Also, this guide that already exists is the best one available, so I would recommend reading it as well.

INTRODUCTION

If you are travelling in India you really owe it to yourself to take the train at least once. It is crowded, the trains are often late and it is very confusing, but it is also the quintessential Indian travel experience. It is how most Indians get around the country, and is a good way to experience everyday life. It is also vastly superior to any form of road transportation, bus or even private car. A car may be slightly more comfortable, but the bumps, curves and hair raising driving conditions make the ride a lot less relaxing. A flight is better, but taking the overnight trains is a great way to save money on hotel rooms and quite a bit cheaper.

CLASSES

There is really only 4 classes that you need to be concerned with on Indian Railways.

AC Chair Car - This exists only Shatabi Express day trains. It is the standard recline chair setup that you are used to on Amtrak or any European train. This is the only class where free food is served.

2AC or 2 Tier Air Con - This is the one that most people should take. It has air conditioned cars (sometimes a little too air conditioned), and is relatively clean (keep in mind this is India however). The car is separated into 6 bunk sections, 2 of the beds are on one side of the train, one above the other, lying parallel to the direction of the train. Then there is the hallway, then there is an area with 4 bunks, one on top of the other, on opposite walls, lying perpendicular to the train. At night curtains separate the 2 beds on the side from the hallway and the 4 beds from the hallway. During the day the bottom beds are used as seats for the 2 people in the bunks on that wall. Linens are provided, but you make the beds. Your cabin mates will be middle class Indian businessman types and some western travellers, depending on what the route is. We travelled this class on all overnight trains and we always got a very good nights sleep. The prime berths are the bottom bunks not on the side. The side bunks may also be good if you are travelling solo, as you have complete privacy when the curtains are drawn, rather then sharing the area behind the curtain with the other 3 people on the wider side.

3AC or 3 Tier Air Con - Same as 2AC but with 6 beds where there are 4 on the wide side. The beds are 3 layer bunks rather then two. We never travelled in this class, because it was not that much cheaper then 2AC, but it seemed like it would be fine as well.

Sleeper - Same setup as 3AC but with no AC. Dirtier cars as well. This has the open barred windows that you have probably seen in classic Indian train photos. We took this a lot during the day, as it was never crowded during the day and the fresh air can be quite pleasant. It is also much cheaper, so why not save money during the day.

SCHEDULES AND AVAILABILITY

One of the hardest things to do in the Indian train system is figure out what train to take. There is no Internet application that figures out the most efficient route, including transfers, from one place to another. Rather, the Indian Railways site will only tell you if a train exists from one distinct station to another. This is really not as big a deal as you would think, since it would be very difficult to ever pull off an Indian railways journey with transfers. For most people there will always be a train that goes from any common origin to the next logical destination. If it is a place where there is no train, then you might need to take a bus. Another good way of figuring out where you might need to route your trip through is to look at a map, like in Lonely Planet, that has the railway routes on it. By looking at where the railways go you can figure out where you would probably have to connect.

The most impotent resource for finding your train is the Indian Railways website, it is very poorly designed, but does have a lot of useful info on it. There are two primary sections of interest both accessible from clicking on the top, "Trains between imp. stations", which has drop down boxes of all major stations (FYI. there is no station for Goa it is called Madgoan), and "Train/Fare Accommodation", which can look up any station in the Indian Railways network. On this page first you type in part of the station name, and then you will get drop down boxes of stations that match what you put in. The resulting information is the same, it is just easier to use the first if you are going to be using major stations. Please note that some cities have many major stations, so if there is no train between two places that obviously should have one, look for another station in the same city. Such as, if you put in New Delhi and Agra City you will get no trains, that is because the main station in Agra is called Agra Cantonment (AGRA CANTT). Sometimes you may have to refer to the Lonely Planet, since that is the only place you are going to find out things like that the main train station in Kolkata is called Howrah.

Once you have found your two stations, you pick your class and day and hit the button. The class is not totally impotent, I usually pick 2AC for a night train and sleeper for a day train. They show you a lot of the other classes too, so you do not necessarily have to pick the class you want. The next page shows the trains that run on the day you want to go. In order to find out how many seats are on any given train, click the radio button next to it and hit the "Get Availability" button. The screen you get show the availability in the class you selected earlier (as well as one class down) for the 6 days starting on the day you picked.

Now we get to the tricky subject of the different types of availability. In my experience there were 3 different statuses that a train would be in:

AVAILABLE - Obviously this is the best, it means there are seats still available. If you go to an advance ticket window they should be able to give you a ticket with a seat number on it.

RAC - Reservations Against Cancellations - I was never completely clear about this, but my understanding it that it means that they cannot give you an actual seat at this time, but you will have a seat on the train.

WL - Waitlist - This means that there are not enough seats right now, and you are buying a seat betting that others will cancel. This sounds really bad, but for some reason, there are always a lot of cancellations on an Indian train. I was told by several locals and family members that a number less then 10 in 2AC means that you are pretty much certain to get a seat. I would assume that number would be quite a bit higher in a class like sleeper, since there are a lot more cars and seats in sleeper then in 2 or 3 AC. We never had a WL ticket not work out, but according to the sign on the wall in the station you should be able to return your WL ticket, if a seat did not open up, and get your money back.

Little sidebar here...

If you do buy a RAC or Waitlist ticket there are two ways that you can find out what seat you are assigned to, or if you have a seat at all. The first is to go to the Indian Railways website and click on the link at the top that says "Passenger/PNR Status". On the resulting screen enter in the PNR number that is printed on the top of your ticket. The website will show you the current status of your ticket and your seat, if you have moved up on the list enough to get one. The second method is more basic. When you go to the train station there will be big dot matrix passenger manifests for every train tacked to a big board, usually around track 1. Look on these sheet for your train and class and you should find your name, and the name of everyone else on the train with a seat. This is the final authority on where you are sitting. They also sometimes stick these sheets to the side of the actual rail car and the conductor will always have a copy, which is what he uses to figure out what seats are empty.

Sidebar over, back to the website.

One additional important thing to use in this section of the website. Please note on the screen where you pick your train there is a box that says "General Quota". When you search under the General Quota you are looking at the seats that anyone can buy, you should run your search this way first. Luckily for non-Indians there is also a "Foreign Tourist Quota". These are seats that are only sold to people who have a foreign passport and are on a tourist visa (although probably any westerner will have no problem getting a ticket). In order to search for these change that box to "Foreign Tourist Quota" before you click "Get Availability".

I know these tickets sound great, but as with all things Indian, there is a catch. First of all, there are not foreign tourist tickets on all trains, only ones between major tourist destinations. Second, as near as I could tell, you can only buy these tickets at the special places for foreign tourists to buy tickets that exist at major (like Delhi, Mumbai, etc.) stations. The lonely planet can help you out if you want to find out if there is a special foreign ticket area in the city you are in. Basically, don't expect to just stroll up to a window at any one horse town along the line and be able to purchase a foreign tourist ticket. Also, the foreign tourist windows sell regular tickets as well, so even if there are only regular tickets and not foreign tourist tickets you can still go to the foreign tourist area.

One other scam to note here, which I saw only in Delhi, was that we were trying to walk into the train station to get to the foreign tourist ticket area and a man stuck his arm in front of me and asked for my ticket. He then tried to convince me that I needed a ticket to get in the station, and to go with him to an office (certainly his friends) to buy one. This is just a scam, there is no area of an Indian train station that you need a ticket to access, and most tickets are sold inside. The only place that anyone legitimate will ask to see you ticket is on the train.

BUYING A TICKET

Now that you have figured out what trains you are interested in, and if there are seats remaining (or a reasonable number on the waitlist) it is time to buy your ticket. For clarity sake I will separate this in to two sections, advance and day of tickets, as they are two very different systems.

Advance Tickets:

The line is a little uncertain to me, but supposedly as long as your are 24 hours before the train leaves you can buy an advance ticket. If you are in a big tourist destination, then your best move is to go to the foreign tourist area to buy tickets. The Lonely Planet can tell you where this is. I went to two of these, the one at New Delhi station is upstairs in a large office. In Mumbai CST (formerly Victora) it is a special window in the upstairs ticket window area. They have some system in Mumbai where an unruly mob of people get numbers for the windows upstairs in a chaotic pen downstairs, but if you are a tourist, just go upstairs, you just queue up at the window. These are the best places to buy tickets because the people who work there speak English and they sell foreign tourist tickets (if available).

If you are in a city, or major population center, that does not have a special foreign tourist area, then they will at least usually have a designated advance ticket area that is used by the locals as well. Once again, Lonely Planet can tell you where this is. Also, for those in Goa, there is one of these offices in the main bus terminal in Panjim, which is convenient since the train does not run by the coast. From my experience these windows usually have a system where you get a number and then they call you to a window, so it is not a total madhouse from a queueing prospective. These are OK, they just might now speak as good English, and as far as I know they cannot sell foreign tourist tickets.

I never had to do this, but if you are in a out of the way place, that does not have any of the above mentioned offices, then I am pretty sure that you just head up to the regular ticket window. There has to be some system to buy advance tickets in these places, so I assume this is it. Every time I bought tickets from the regular window it was on the day of the train, which is a different deal.

Another, quite reasonable, option is to pay someone else to do the leg work for you. Most backpacker type hotels and travel offices should be able to get a train ticket for you, probably for a 50 or so rupee surcharge. One catch is they will not be able to get you foreign tourist tickets. We did this once and it worked out fine. One caveat I would add is that it might be a better idea to do once you know what a real Indian train ticket looks like, so you might want to think about buying your own first. If you have not already seen one, they are printed on a dot-matrix printer on thin 1980's line feed computer paper forms and are about 8 inches by 3 inches. I would look at anything else with suspicion.

Day of Train Tickets:

If you cannot get tickets ahead of time for the train, you can get tickets at the regular window the day of the train. The thing about this is that you cannot get a seat reservation the day of the train.

The reason for this seemed to be that while the train is still more then a day in the future, the seat reservations are managed by the computer system and thus can be given out to people who want tickets. On the day that the train is leaving they print up these big passenger manifests that have the names of everyone on the train, as well as assigning all the people in RAC and Waitlist statuses to a seat, if they have one. Once these lists are printed up they are posted at all the train stations, as well as one that the train conductor maintains as a master copy, where he can move around people or put people in different classes as he sees fit. Thus, after these manifests are printed there are no more seat reservations.

We had two different experiences buying day of train tickets. Several times we took trains for a fairly short (less then 5 hour) ride in the middle of the day. When doing this I just went to the regular window and asked for a sleeper ticket to my destination (I was told I could not buy a ticket for any class higher at that time). They handed me a little printed chit that had the two station names on it, but no specific train or seat. So, when the train arrived we just hopped on and took a seat in a sleeper car. The thing is that the sleeper cars in the middle of the day were always nearly empty, I assume because most Indians do not want to pay for the relative luxury of sleeper during the day when they could travel in a lower class. So, we just gabbed an empty seat, the conductor came to take our ticket and everything was fine. Also, sleeper is perfectly comfortable in the middle of the day, all the windows are open so there is plenty of air.

One other time we had to take a night train from Varkala to Chennai without reservations. Before we went to the station I checked the loads on the Internet and found that there were two trains, one left 2 hours earlier, but had tones of extra space in 2AC. The later train was full. With this information, we decided to take the earlier train, and attempt to upgrade on the train. This time at the station I was told that I could only by unreserved 2nd class tickets (the lowest class). I think the reason I was not able to by sleeper at the window like before was probably due to it being an overnight train. So, we just got on the train and sat in 2 empty seats in 2AC. When the conductor came by we asked if there was room in 2AC, which there was, so he just took the difference in the fares (it cost 1000 rupees more a piece to go from 2nd class to 2AC, but believe me it is worth it) and assigned us seats in 2AC. So, the moral of the story is that it is possible to upgrade on the train, but you are probably best off making sure that there are plenty of extra seats, unless you are happy squeezed in the lowest possible class on an Indian train.

Also, keep in mind that if you do buy day of tickets you will have to deal with an Indian ticket queue. These things are a full contact sport, so don't go in without the right attitude. People will press up against you in ways that are pretty uncomfortable for a foreigner, you just need to get used to the fact that being in constant physical contact with other, often sweaty, people in a queue is the norm in India. Also, when you get up to the window people will try to reach around you with their money and hand it to the agent. Use your large western body and elbows to shield the area in front of the window, and have enough rupees in your hand so you can quickly shove them in front of the person who sells the tickets.

GOING TO THE STATION AND GETTING ON THE TRAIN

So now comes the big day and you are ready to get on the train. An Indian train station is an experience like few others. They are dirty, chaotic, confusing and often full of people who want your money (especially in big tourist areas). The layout is usually the same everywhere. There is a building with a central lobby where they sell tickets, and sometimes have some food vendors. Then there will be between 2 and 15 tracks (depending on if you are in a big city or a small town). There will be island platforms off in the middle of the tracks that are connected to the main building via a tunnel, or usually a footbridge (which only about half the locals use, the others just run across the tracks).

When you arrive the first thing you will see in a main station is usually hundreds to thousands of people sleeping on the floor of the lobby and sometimes out in the street in front of the station. These people are changing trains and have to kill many hours at the station, no big deal, there is always a pathway through them to the tracks.

In big stations they will usually have digital boards in some degree where you can look to find out on what track your train arrives. If these are available, try to find out what track you need to go to. The thing is that often the boards are broken, or if it is a small station they do not exist. If it is a small station then it is no big deal, usually there will just be one track running in either direction. In this case just ask around as to which side the train is going to show up, or if your train is in the near future and there is a big crowd on only one side, that is probably the side you want to be on.

When the boards are not working at a big station things are a little more complicated. They do generally have announcements in English on the speakers when the train is pulling in to the station, so that is one way of figuring it out. This may sound crazy, but if all else fails you can just pick a platform and wait on it, then carefully look at the placards that are on the side of the train as each one pulls into the station. What happens if the train pulls into a different platform then you are on, you might ask. Well, keep in mind that an Indian train pulls into and out of a station like a ship pulls into a dock. It is not like Japan where the train pulls up, the doors automatically open and you have 1 minute to get on. First of all, in India the doors are open on the train the entire time, even when it is moving. Also, trains usually stop for at least 5 minutes, sometimes much longer, up to 20 minutes. So, if you see your train at a different platform just hustle over there using the bridge or tunnel and you should be fine. Also, even when the digital board has the track number on it, you really should keep your head up and watch where the crowds are in the station and what trains are pulling in. It certainly would not be out of the ordinary for a sign in India to be wrong. If you ever find yourself waiting alone on a platform for an overnight train at a major station, you are probably in the wrong place, and should try to figure out where to go.

If there are digital signs you also might be able to see when the train is expected to arrive. Trains are almost always late, sometimes by as much as several hours. If there are no digital signs then there may be a chalkboard or some other means of telling you when the trains are expected to arrive.

So, now that you have found your platform the only thing left to do is wait. Now is usually also a good time to stock up on snacks and water bottles from the vendors in the station. You especially may want to get some water as it can sometimes be hard to come by on the train. Another thing is that you may get bothered by occasional beggars in the station. This is one of the few times that I recommend just giving them 5-10 rupees or whatever you think it will take to get them to leave. Unlike most situations where you can just keep on walking, you have to wait in the train station, and since they know this they will be very persistent.

One other note is regarding ticket scams. We never had any big problem with this, but just to reiterate from above. The only person who you need to show your ticket to is the uniformed Indian Railways conductor on the train. I would be very, very suspicious of anyone who asks to see your ticket in the station, as this is not something that is done, as far as I know. Also, all Indian Railways personnel wear a uniform, so do not show your ticket to anyone who does not. If for some reason you feel compelled to show your ticket to someone, I would not hand it to them, just hold on to in yourself and show it to them.

ON THE TRAIN

This part is pretty simple. You just sit in your seat, or go to bed, and watch the world go by. Often your fellow travelers will be pretty friendly, and talking to them is a great way to meet some everyday people. As far as security, the good classes of trains seem very safe, although most people chain their bag to something when they go to sleep. We used a bike cable lock for this and never had any problems.

As far as food goes, sometimes there is way too much of it offered, sometimes not enough. Guys basically just walk down the ailes and sell stuff, which can get annoying when there are too many of them, but that is part of the charm. Tea and coffee guys are always around, and there will be an occasional guy with water bottles. Usually around meal times they do come around with some small food items, aloo paratha and such. Occasionally, especially when we got on a train that originated before dinner a person would come around and ask if you wanted dinner, then return with some food later.

The thing about the food and the water is that it pays to make sure you have enough food and water to go the entire trip if you really need to. We learned this lesson when we got on a train midway down the line at around 9 PM at night. Basically all the food guys were done for the night, so we did not get anything, and had to eat glucose biscuits for dinner. Also, we never had any problem with food sickness from the train food or the platform food, but it is generally prepared with the same level of cleanliness as most Indian fast food, so you may want to be careful if you just arrived.

One other approach for getting food and drinks, which I have done many times but cannot wholeheartedly recommend is running off the train during a stop. As I said before, Indian trains generally stop of quite a while at the station, so there is theoretically enough time to run off and grab drinks or pre-made food. You can generally figure out when the train is leaving the station because they blow the whistle right before the leave, and you can watch the conductors, who usually hang out on the platform during the stop. When the conductors start moving back to the train, you need too as well. Since the doors are always open on Indian trains you probably could get on the train, wild west style, after it starts moving, but I never waited that long.

The open doors are also nice for another reason. On a long trip, when you want to stand and get some fresh air, it can be pretty nice to hang out by the open door and watch the world go by. You can even hang out the side a bit and see where you are going, but just look carefully and stick your head out a bit at a time to make sure you don't get hit by a pole or anything.

GETTING OFF

This can be more challenging then you think. Often when you arrive at a stop there is no sign saying what stop it is right out the window. Obviously one thing to do is to stop out of the train and look down the platform, then you can usually see a sign. Another thing is to ask other people, but be sure if you do this you ask "what stop is this?". If you ask "is this .....?" people will almost always say yes, even if they do not understand you. Another good thing to do is write down or print out the schedule for the train that you can get from the website. That way you will have an idea of what the stops are leading up to yours.

So, there you have it, my brain-dump of how to ride the Indian train, and as the say on the top of the tickets, Happy Journey!