Barak Valley Express - A Scenic Train Journey

Myself and KS visited Kohima, Nagaland to attend the week long Hornbill Festival held during December 1-7. After the end of our Kohima stay, our plan was to move to Imphal by road (NH39, 140 kms) and then to Aizawl before concluding my part of the North-East trip at Agartala. The continuation of Kohima-Imphal road blockade and the resultant problems in Manipur made us to skip our Manipur trip and to think of alternative options of travelling to Mizoram and Tripura. KS suggested that we cover Dimapur-Lumding-Silchar by train, stay overnight at Silchar and depart for Aizwal by early morning bus or share Sumo. Thus our destiny of travelling on one of the most scenic journeys on Indian railways was decided and Barak Valley Express being the day train, was the first and the last choice to enjoyed the scenic beauty of this route.

The landscape on the Lumding-Silchar route reminded me of the scenery I often see on Konkan Railway while visiting Goa. The journey between Lower Haflong and Bandarkhal railway stations on this route was enchanting with dense forest of bamboo tress, wild banana plantations and tall grass like creepers. At some places, forest were very close the the railway track and only when the trains arrive, one knows the the existence of track. Unfortunately, this is the section which is the most sensitive from the militancy point of view as the place gives the perfect hide out to militant outfits in the forest with dense vegetation. Most of the militants' ambushes have taken place in this section during the last 3-4 years, the last one being in October 2011.

It is a misnomer to call Barak Valley Express as an ‘express’ train. It stops at all the 30 railway stations before it reaches Silchar. As per schedule, the train is supposed to stop at all these stations for one minute except at Badarpur Junction where its schedule halt is 25 minutes for change of engine from the front to back of the rake, the train stoppages in all other stations ranged between minimum of 10 minutes to a high of 30 minutes probably due to single track and old signalling system. Furthermore, in the hill section, due to numerous steep curves and old bridges over streams, the speed restriction is 10 kms as indicated on the board near such places. No doubt, the train takes more than 12 hours to cover a distance of 215 kms from Lumding to Silchar.

The slow speed of the train was a blessing in disguise for us. The journey relived me of the train journeys of my younger days when I used to get down at every station wherever the train halted to walk on the platform and get to know many things happening around the platforms. The slow speed also gave us enough time to enjoy the passing scenic landscape.

The detailed travelogue and pictures at Barak Valley Express - A Scenic Train Journey

Great blog. Thanks for posting link. Only trouble is that reading it has made me hungry.

SK: as usual a wonderful and detailed blog!

Your blog captures the charm of travelling by this quaint old MG train in hilly terrain of Barak Valley in Assam, exceedingly well. Pictures too are superb.

I think it was well worth the 12+ hours of daytime travel on this train. The lines of hawkers (of local produce) and the milling crowds in every station-platform was an amazing local-culture display experience!

I landed back in Mumbai yesterday evening. Today, I downloaded all my Northeast pictures to my desktop PC and they all add up to 2420 Pics+Videos! So I have a stupendous task ahead! I think I will be busy for next one month ... before I can complete my blog for this Tour.
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I uploaded my set of pictures of Barak Valley Express journey here in this Flickr Set: Barak-Valley-Express

There are also 4 Video-Clips in the above Set.

@SK: The 'nice' video clip of our train turning high on a curved bridge over a deep ravine & stream is in the set here: Train-Turning
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Great pics KS. Watching the video of the train crossing the bridge made me feel quite giddy.

Another of routes threatened by broad-gauge conversion. Apparently the future Lumding-Badarpur broad-gauge line won't go through Haflong.

I had seen this video of Barak Valley Express crossing the bridge over a stream, on your camera but after viewing here, I can say that it is a fantastic capture. I did not know that the bridge was so long with a steep curve.

Wonderful pics from both KS and SK!!

Your pics brings back memories of my travel in the same area many years back. I had taken the Cachar Exp from Silchar to Lumding once, on the way to Guwahati.

I remember I had seen raw deer meat being sold by tribals in Halflong station. I heard it was an engineering marvel when the British constructed the railway line in the Halflong segment.

P.S. I regret not being able to meet KS during the last meet-up in Kolkata. Hopefully, both KS and SK can make a joint visit to Kolkata soon!

Good writeup and pictures Sadanand. Nice to know that you'll enjoyed the second leg of your journey. Karbi Anglong and NC hills is really beautiful but as Sadanand mentioned insurgency is still quite active in this area, which is quite unfortunate.

Thanks for appreciating the write up and pictures.

Thanks are also due to you for giving us good company on 1st and 3rd day of Hornbill Festival and also for helping us in our Khonoma village trip. Ms Navino's father Savino( is it the correct names?) guided us extensively in Khonoma village walking tour and Ms Navino specially arranged vegetarian food for us. I am so impressed with the visit to Khonoma village that I have decided to write a separate blog on it.

I spent hours flying over the Barak Valley Train route on Google Earth!

Its an amazing flight almost as much fun as the train ride. Most of the route areas are in High Resolution in GE and I could identify most of the Railway Stations and see the many tunnels and bridges on this route. The complicated routing in the Halflong Hills area due to terrain was amazing to see on GE. The curving Diyung railway bridge (where the Video Clip was shot by me - see earlier post) is also located easily.

I have appended below a list of 30 Rly stations on this route. Also attached a Google Earth Placemark (KMZ) as Zip file showing the identified Railway Stations and the Diyung Bridge ... if anybody here is crazy enough to want to see that!

15693 BARAK VALLEY EXP List of 30 Stations
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SR Stn Station ======== Dep Arr
01 LMG Lumding Jn First 06:15
02 MYD Manderdisa 06:30 06:31
03 HTL Hatikhali 06:46 06:47
04 LGT Langting 07:15 07:16
05 DKE Dihakho 07:33 07:34
06 MUPA Mupa 07:51 07:52
07 KQI Kalachand 08:07 08:08
08 MBG Maibang 08:19 08:20
09 WDA Wadrengdisa 08:44 08:45
10 DJA Daotuhaja 08:58 08:59
11 MXR Mahur 09:38 09:39
12 MGE Migrendisa 10:04 10:05
13 LFG Lower Halflong 10:59 11:00
14 BF Bagetar 11:21 11:22
15 HFG Haflong Hill 11:31 11:32
16 JTG Jatinga 11:54 11:55
17 MGX Mailongdisa 12:34 12:35
18 HJO Harangajao 13:34 13:35
19 DTC Ditokcherra 13:53 13:54
20 BXK Bandarkhal 14:07 14:08
21 DCA Damchara 14:27 14:28
22 CNE Chandranathpur 14:54 14:55
23 BHZ Bihara 15:04 15:05
24 HLX Hilara 15:20 15:21
25 SQF Sukritipur 15:37 15:38
26 BPB Badarpur Jn 16:45 17:10
27 PNGM Panchgram 17:23 17:24
28 KTX Katakhal Jn 17:49 17:51
29 ARCL Arunachal 18:09 18:10
30 SCL Silchar 18:45 Last
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Thanks SK for bringing the first hand account of this amazing journey. I have heard about this scenic train journey but reading first time about it. You are making my NE plan immensely complex now

Kudos for excellent report and brilliant snaps!!

Thanks for zip file of GE.

The hill scenes look more beautiful on GE than what we saw while travelling by Barak Valley Express. I never imagined that the train took so much circuitous route from Lower Haflong station onwards as seen on GE.

By the way, I was able to see this link in a better resolution than what I saw of the link you sent me earlier.