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Indian Railways

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INDIAN RAILWAYS

The giant lifeline of India.

No visit to India is complete without a journey on this ever-growing network that breaks record after world-record. Experience the mania of the stations through which the population of small cities ebb and flow unapologetically, day and night. Giant carts of freight being pulled & pushed with determination through masses standing patiently, if not rushing platforms, passages, staircases, and ticket halls.

The panic at not seeing your train listed, wondering if the train just departing was yours. Waiting for the ‘seating charts’ to know if you’ve received your ‘Reservation against Cancellation’ (RAC). Station announcements. Food sellers. Chai Wallahs. Dogs. Lights. Noise. A wild, vibrant existence of the world’s 8th largest employer and 4th largest rail network. It is phenomenal.

On our first Australian Cricket Tour to India in 1996 there wasn’t a trainline between Mumbai and Goa, and only 3 domestic airlines. Now there are at least 4 trains per day from Mumbai proper to Goa and 7 major domestic airlines operating hundreds of flights per day across the country, cheaply, so ‘enticement’ to fly and save a day on the railways is strong.

In recent years I am guilty of taking a $100 flight and not Indian Railways through nothing more than laziness. When you consider (many) First Class AC (1A) trains include food and bedding, cost less than a flight, and saves one night's accommodation, why fly?

1A Mumbai - New Delhi is just A$90 (30/06/26) for 17 hours, with the very grubby Sleeper Class (SL) far more affordable, though much longer.

Each SL carriage has 72 berths with at least 10 carriages per train rake and is oriented to most Indian railway travellers and frugal backpackers.

SL Mumbai - New Delhi is only A$12 (30/06/26) for 25 hours. Been there, done that, and saved not a lot, thinking back!

So, along with the trains that originate in Mumbai 'proper', up to 7 trains to Goa come from New Delhi (and other cities). They don’t stop in Mumbai, but pass what is the multi-island peninsula of Mumbai.

You must travel to Vasai Road, Kalyan, and Panvel up to 66km from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus though still sold to you as MUMBAI, so choose your station carefully. Please Read:

Suffice to say, there is no shortage of rail options. There are a lot more direct trains in all classes that are cleaner, faster, more comfortable, and indeed reliable than in 1996 when often 24-hour journeys would take 30+ hours. 30-hour journeys could take 40+ hours if there was a train at all. Following Cricket World Cup 1996 there was also no train from New Delhi to Chandigarh for the semi-final, so it was a painful 5 hours by bus.

There are now up to 12 trains per day from New Delhi to Chandigarh!

So if you want a railway adventure when watching cricket, Indian Railways can take you to 18 of India's 19 active Test venues (without considering white-ball venues). No train runs to Dharamsala, you take a taxi 86km to Dharamsala from Pathankot railway station, or fly from New Delhi.

Though not on any cricket schedule if you want to break records and test your boundaries of physical tolerance, travel from Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari. Departing the far north-east of India now daily at 1900pm, you arrive 4 nights and near 75 hours later at India’s southern-most tip.

This epic journey is a staggering A$22 in SL, A$52 in AC3, or A$75 in AC2. Alas, you first need a 13 hour journey from Guwahati so a 40mins flight for $60 would be excusable if you are about to spend 75-hours on the rails!

That said, even short trips are wild affairs especially at railway stations. 20,000 people populate every kilometre of track so there will always be a grand transition of people at each stop. These along with food and chai sellers taking advantage of the 1000’s of people on each train that stops for what is often just 2-mins.

A frenetic chorus of hawkers cash in on their 2-mins (1-min at very-small stations) no matter what time of the night.

Though far from stopping at all 7500+ stations, my favourite is Itarsi Junction (Nagpur-Delhi line), the platform filled with the widest choice of food on the rails. As the 8th busiest junction in India, Itarsi feeds almost 400 daily trains across just 8 platforms. I’ve always got off the train for the 5mins it stops to get something different to eat!

When following cricket, most journeys were to/from/between Mumbai – New Delhi - Chandigarh – Kolkata – Chennai – Bengaluru – Agra - Nagpur – Mumbai. We never did much sightseeing but when restricted by a cricket schedule you do what you can. Perhaps the booking process discouraged us from going where the game didn’t take us?

To buy train tickets 20+ years ago, you needed to (im)patiently line up at any 'big city' main station and submit your request form. You couldn’t just buy a ticket from Mumbai to New Delhi you had to 'book one' with first knowing the exact train name and number. You could book for up to 6 people but only if you had their passport details too.

If travelling India for weeks or months you were well-served buying ‘Trains at a Glance’. This invaluable book was the complete Indian Railways timetable, which considering there were 6000 trains per day (20+ years ago!), was only A5 size and ‘Hausfrau magazine’ thickness, the detail was quite remarkable.

Avoiding long public queues, Mumbai & New Delhi had (have) dedicated foreign tourist reservation centres. You still needed to line up but at least you were in an airconditioned room waiting to be called. This could still take hours, but train information was available at counters along with ‘trains at a glance’ to help fill in your form/s.

Fast forward 25 years, everyone can book Indian Railways from their living room, if you have the inclination, for the now 13000 daily trains to & from the 7500 stations. There are still some of the limitations faced in 1996, though the coffee is better at home than from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus cafeteria!

In 2008 when we first booked ‘online tickets’, you could only have an 8-character username, and you can use any 10-digit number starting with 9 for your mandatory ‘Mobile Number’, which back then was never actually used! Indian Railways booking site (not 3rd party) now allows international numbers, though you must pay to have your number verified and you can’t proceed without it.

Although you can still only book up to 6 people on one reservation, typing your name, passport, and destination address is now much easier than writing in the impossibly small fields on the paper forms (one per train), though you can still be hamstrung booking online. 

More than 1.2m access Indian Railways per minute, which can inhibit its operation, though now you can have a 30-character username to individualise the population of Australia that use Indian Railways every day! Conversely, your FULL NAME can only be 16 characters on the booking!

It’s incredible that such limitations exist but when you look at the enormity of the system, it’s either fallen through the cracks or the train tickets only have enough room to print 16 characters. You’d think with all the detail required when booking, passengers using their full name would be integral.

While we consider that, get your head around these amazing Indian Railways - Facts & Figures

Many of these are ever-changing as are our Australian Cricket Tours to India. What we do and how we travel across India is dependent on the schedule. We would love to include Indian Railways on every tour, but every tour is never played where we want it to be.

2A would be our first choice because of availability, and not every train has 1A. A single carriage either has 18 berths in 1A, 48 berths in 2A, or 64 berths in 3A. Bedding is included in all AC Tiers.

In 1996 there was only Unreserved / 2C / SL / AC / Chair Car). Now there are 30 'train types' divided into 13 classes, which include luxury day trains, luxury sleeper trains, executive chair cars,  super-fast Vande Bharat, and double-decked commuters. See the full list of train types and classes on:

AC is a comfortable way to travel Indian Railways, but being climate controlled means the windows are sealed, which is a down-side. Open windows in lower classes allow for better photos and indeed views as windows in AC carriages are often dirty or tinted and difficult to see through. This blunts the edge of travelling Indian Railways; truly experienced when packed in with the masses ‘slumming’ overnight in SL Class. 

Speaking of the masses, images of trains laden with people on the roof is not a thing of the past even though it has been illegal since 1987 to 'steal a ride' on the outside.

Images seen today are trains laden with pilgrims or festival goers 'commuting to the grounds'. They are not people clinging to a high-speed long-distance rake. It is widely accepted that people will ride on the outside of a train to reach the pilgrimage site by which ever means possible!

Mind you, there were times when one thought the thousands that would ride on the outside of the train were in your carriage. Though everyone must be ticketed, I once saw 18 in a 6-berth compartment, without the Travelling Ticket Examiner (TTE) batting an eyelid.

Part of the SL experience of 1996 was staying in a railway station retiring room, before an early departure or late arrival. You could only stay one night, and you had to show your railway ticket to prove you were leaving early.

Now you book retiring rooms online through your 'booking'.

As such, you can't use these very cheap but very clean dormitory rooms to save money by not staying in more expensive filthy flop-house on Triplicane High Road (Chennai) for the duration of a test match, as one forgettable place to stay! 

Thankfully, we won’t be travelling with sleeping bags & pillows on our next Australian Cricket Tours To India, with bedding provided in our soft selection of 1A and 2A when we rock and roll around Incredible India.

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