Last week, Indian Railways celebrated its 160th anniversary. It is the
world's second biggest employer and it has over 75,000 kilometers of track
stretching across this vast land. Of course for Indians it's a fundamental
part of their transport system, but also for the modern, international
traveler it can form a fundamental part of your journey. At Wild
Frontiers we get asked time and time again. So what are the trains like?
How comfortable are they? What do the bunks look like? Of course that's
quite hard to explain over the telephone so what I thought I'd do in this
short film is not tell you but show you exactly what the trains are like.
So first of all this is what's known as first AC chair car. This is the
kind of service that you'll get if you're going on short train journeys in
India say between Delhi and Agra or Delhi and Rishikesh. Short journeys of
up to about four or five hours something like that. As you can see it's
very comfortable. The seats are reclining, you get mineral water, you'll
get breakfast, if you are brave enough to eat it, but yea it's a good
service easy and comfortable.
So this is first AC. Now the problem with this is they usually only have
one carriage on the train and it only sleeps twelve people which means it's
hard to get for groups but for mates this is what we try to use, two bunks
behind a sealed door. The second one that we mainly use for our groups is
called two tier AC. And this is what you get when you sleep during the
day. The back goes up in the evening you put it down and sleep on that.
What you also get at the end of the carriage or corridor is two more
berths which go down to make two beds and then goes up as a chair for the
day's journey. And each of the little berths is separated by a curtain
which can be drawn across to give you some privacy.
Okay so this three tier AC now what you can see here are the three bunks or
rather one bunk with three berths in it both sides and during the day this
gets pushed down but at night it gets pulled up and makes the third berth
of the bunk. This is three tier AC so that means there are six people in
each of these with two more at the far end. Here are two gentlemen
illustrating and there is the biscuit wallah so they are as comfortable as
the two tier, they're just a bit more crowded, that's all. There's no
curtain, no door, they're open.
So another thing to say is that each person in this class gets a blanket
and a pillow just like this chap is bringing down now, which he hands out
to everyone. They're actually incredibly clean and very okay to use. You
don't really need to bring a sleeping bag or anything. They're perfectly
okay.
You also have a constant flow of refreshment wallahs. This guy is selling
samosas but you also have chai wallahs, and water wallahs, and sandwich
wallahs, and crisp wallahs and every wallah you can think of. To be
honest, three tier AC does get quite crowded and we try to avoid it, it's
only when there's spill over that we do end up using it. Most of the time
we try to go to two tier AC which is much less crowded and much more
comfortable.
There are a couple of things to mention about traveling on the trains in
India. The first thing of course is the security. Just like anywhere in
the world you do need to take care particularly of your important
possessions like your passport, your wallet, et cetera. Actually the
security on the trains is pretty good in India and it's very unusual that
people get things stolen, but just like anywhere you need to take a little
bit of care.
The second thing to mention is that Indian Railways only allow you to book
seats on trains 90 days prior to departure. So this means you need to have
your travel plans in place as early as possible as trains particularly the
first and second classes can get booked up very quickly and of course if
you are booking later on it's all done on a rather random computer system
which means you may not get berths together if you are traveling with
friends or in a group. Of course on World Frontiers we manage this
situation as best we can and make sure that everybody stays within the same
compartment but the sooner you can get your travel plans together the
better.
But overall traveling on the trains in India is not only a convenient cost
effective and comfortable way to travel it also opens up India to you. If
you're the type of person that likes to travel beneath the surface, to see
the real country, to see how real people live, then train travel in India
is a quintessential part of your travel experience.