Indian Trains :
Well, this is one more piece of information for those of you who are new to India in general and the train travel in India in particular.
Here you are groping to get a flavor of the Indian Railway system and tips on how to plan your train journey in India. Also we’ll try to understand a bit about various classes of the trains ; their pros and cons.
This is going to be a bit long, like a train journey. When you need now is bit of patience and a big mug of beer!
Let’s start without wasting any more time. At first we’ll try to get a grip on the classes you can opt for in a typical long-distance train. ....
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Trains at a Glance : (TAG) is a handy train guide published by the Indian Railways. Along with a host of other train travel related details, Trains at Glance contains the schedules ( timings ) of about 700 major trains operating in Indian Railway’s network. Trains at a Glance tables list the arrival and departure timings of the trains, stoppage at major stations, days in service of the trains, classes of accommodation available in each trains, distances, availability of pantry car with each trains etc. This timetable section makes the major portion of the Trains at a Glance.
While the Indian Railway’s website is the quick way to search for the trains, Trains at a Glance is a handy quick guide to plan your journey, especially while you are traveling. Typically a new one edition of Trains at a Glance is published every year with updated schedules. You can buy this guide from the enquiry counters or the small bookstalls within the railway stations. Trains at a Glance : more ►
Food : While traveling by an Indian Train, in general you have many options to buy food.Medium to large size stations have restaurants and many food stalls attached to them. This is a good place to buy food, especially if it is your arrival or departure station.
The next two options are for while traveling in the trains.
There are food vendors (the Railways authorized and otherwise) traveling in the train.
Then there is this army of vendors on the platform that attack the train when it is stopped at each station. They sell through the train windows or you can briefly get down on the platform to fetch what you are looking for quickly.
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Indian Train Culture : India is a mysteriously diverse country. As a society its character is unpredictable, structurally chaotic, very much intrusive, somewhat mischievous, a bit corrupt and tricky, unbelievably patient, pretty lethargic, inquisitive to the core, talkative to a point of insanity and obviously a lot noisy. A man on the road sees no reason why he should not talk to a total stranger passing by. At the end the curiosity wins!
Now you put that inside a train. You get India in its rolling-stock version.
Multiply it with the scale that is India. Indian Railways operate more than 14000 (yes, fourteen thousand) trains a day. If traveled towards moon, the distance covered by all these trains easily equals 4 times the journey to moon… that is in its every day operations. 16 million passengers (twice the population of London) travel by train daily.
With 1.6 million employs, Indian Railways looks more like an army. In fact it is the largest employer in the world, if one bar the armies from the contest.
Being that the backdrop, a train journey in India refuses to be just another uneventful and boring affair. More on
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Indian Railways Reservation Counters : Indian Railways operate about 1000 Computerized Reservation offices across the country. The list of the reservation counters are given in alphabetical order. You can also look for the counter locations on a state wise list here. The list is a little older, there is a greater chance that some more reservation facilities are added and a few of the existing facilities are changed.
For those who are new to train travel in India, these reservation offices are from where you can book your seats/berths - from any station to any stations with in the Indian Railways network. Most of the larger cities have more than one reservation counters located at different parts of the city. Major railway stations have the counters typically located withing the railway station complex.
There is of course the IRCTC website from where you can book tickets online too.
Indian Railways Reservation Counters : more ►
