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Top Tips With How To Cope With Indian Trains

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Top Tips With How To Cope With Indian Trains

There are a few things you need to understand about Indian trains and the stations; they are all huge and mildly impossible to navigate. Each station is very different and will no doubt have a dissimilar way of organising itself. So, just when you think you’ve cracked the formula to this debacle, you move on (via train of course) and start the whole learning curve process all over again; just to really test your patience in punishing heat.

The only physical link between train stations is the large paper tickets. The faintly printed invaluable information on it means you’ll treasure it with your life after it took you a significantly long time to obtain it.

Trains are the main mode of transport for long distance journeys in India. Think how big the country is, consider how much of it is still rather rural and then the sheer size of the population; trains make sense. This is the sole reason for every station bursting at the seams all day, every day with people, luggage, dogs, porters, beggars, touts and police – with the odd backpacker.

These huge hollow concrete stations that seem to double up as homes, all have airport security. You must take off you backpack, put it on a conveyor belt to be scanned, and walk through a metal detector archway- at every train station. Contrastingly, it also seems to be an ‘anything goes place’. Kids run over lines with huge white sacks collecting plastic bottles, men wash under the taps on the tracks and families sleep and beg on huge brightly coloured tarpaulins.

 

Now, one of the most important essentials to get your head around whilst travelling by train is class. Class is still a massive distinction, and problem, in the Indian infrastructure and trains are no different. From the cool and almost luxurious 1AC carriage all the way down to the busy, cluttered and un-ordered ‘unreserved ‘carriage. 1,2,3 AC means how many bunk beds will be above each other on each side of the compartment. AC stands for the glorious god send of air-conditioning. 1AC is the most expensive and comfortable and 3AC is the cheapest, yet still comfortable.

Taking an unreserved ticket for a long distance train is not recommended. Anything where you need to sleep, albeit during night time or simply to rest your poor traveller head, is highly advisable to get at least 3AC. Unless, however unreserved is all you are able to obtain in the madness that is Indian train ticket offices or if money really is that tight.

I took a train from Pathankot to Amritsar, unknowingly in unreserved for 25p; it took nearly four hours. The journey mainly consisted of Indian men crowded around us and insisting we taught them every card game we knew. For short journeys, take the unreserved and ‘grin and bear’ the ride like a true traveller – or pay more to upgrade when the ticket man makes his rounds. I actually felt guilty for taking this train as it was just so insanely cheap. At home a journey of that distance, even with my young person’s railcard (and booked weeks in advance) would be around £15. It turned out to be one of my best Indian journeys. I learnt Hindi phrases, card games, culture and about the Indian snacks I was eating; it was more of a true insight into general Indian life.

However, acquiring tickets was a finely tuned art I didn’t manage to crack in my month trip. I found a smile and the minimal Hindi I had picked up went a long way in the ticket offices. Obstacles that stood in my way were: being foreign, being a woman, being ignored and rupee notes from all directions shoved in-front of my face at the kiosk.

The ticket man, in his white doctor’s coat sat two feet away from the kiosk. The thick dull murmur of a filthy air-conditioner unit behind me, partnered with a disinterested ticket officer mumbling something faintly through the partition made it even harder. I felt the possibility of getting a ticket slipping away from our grasps like a dream slipping away from memory when you wake up.

With backpacks slumped almost as low as our moods, there was only one thing for it. I needed to find a woman in the station. After using my 65 litre backpack to guard off queue pushers, I finally had the vital information to fill in on the form – the name of the train and the time it departed. There is no personal space issue an Indian after a train ticket won’t break. Finally, I realised if you can beat them, join them else you’ll never get a ticket.

Lastly, the last item to battle is the most unsuspecting; the form. As long as you know your leaving and arriving destination, name, age sex and preference of ‘veg or non-veg’, you’re laughing. Knowing the name and number of the train is a whole different matter. The funny thing is this information is literally nowhere to be found. Maybe Indians memorise it, or it is ingrained into their memory from a young age. Who knows!

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Top Tips With How To Cope With Indian Trains


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