Travel in South India

conv92

My friends and I are travelling for a month july-august around the south of india, does anybody have any experience using the rail system over there, did you book reservations in advance, use a indrail 30 day ticket or just buy at the station?
I've been looking into it online and it all seems a bit of a nightmare

Tipperary animal lover

Have travelled on the train many times, you can book very easily over there but try and book a few days in advance for best seats etc, most stations in the cities will have a tourist booth for you to book or you'll be approached by someone at the station to help book your ticket. Sometimes this works other times..... You pay for 1st class you get hard seat!!!!
But always find train travel interesting in India especially the squat toilets and the chai tea guy shouting chai chai chai .... Mad

conv92

It certainly sounds interesting, i was thinking of moving down a few classes, get the real India experience ha

Tipperary animal lover

If you take the hard seat class make sure you tie your belongings to yourself or the seat.... It'll grow legs!! 2nd class a/c is grand you'll be able to interact with other travellers.... Enjoy

brozio7

Rail is a great way to see India, my girlfriend and I spent 3 months there. We almost always traveled in sleeper class, which is most of the carriages of the train.
Sleeper class is busy enough, loud and not the cleanest but its good craic.

The popular trains need to be booked days in advance usually, generally in the tourist areas there are small travel agent guys that will get tickets for you for a small fee otherwise you'll have to go and que at the station a few days in advance. (queing in India is an experience in itself, every man for himself)

If you're flying into mumbai and going to Goa try book your tickets before you go online or look into getting them as soon as you arrive as that is a very busy train especially at the weekends.

They also have a thing called Tatkal which is when they put a final few tickets on sale for booked out trains the day before departure. These cost more than normal tickets and travel agents can usually arrange to get you tatkal tickets for a bit extra again.

The india goverment website for booking trains is not great, you can also book trains using cleartrip http://www.cleartrip.com/trains

You should also get some chains and locks to secure your luggage, they sell them in the stations.

India is daunting at first but you'll get used to how everything works pretty quick.

Enjoy

Challo

I agree with the poster above. Sleeper class is absolutely fine and a great experience in itself. I remember getting on a train at 2am with a NZ girl I was travelling with, there were men in our sleepers - no choice but to wake them up and ask them to move, which they did. Honestly train travel was a joy!

I was in India between Oct-Dec which apparently was wedding season - so the trains were very busy, you HAD to book a few days in advance and hope there would be other cancellations. Mainly at train stations (be careful of being led away by touts), some of the big cities had counters for foreigners only. Also there was a website "cleartrip" that I used as a back-up.