Booking Indian Rail Tickets from Abroad

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Booking Indian Rail Tickets from Abroad

Excellent post Dave.

I have made this a sticky.












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Excellent and very useful thread Dave.

And you only need to ask a Moderator to edit the thread when Indian Railways decide to only sell air-con tickets in the morning and non air-con tickets in the afternoon.

I just saw in yatra website that they accept Visa, Mastercard. (http://www.yatra.com/faq-payment-options.html)
As I didn't book yet, I don't know if there are a restriction only for trains.
The train I want to book it's not available on Cleartrip

Unless things have changed very recently Yatra do not accept non Indian credit cards for train travel. It may be possible to book hotels etc.

If you are able to book train tickets on Yatra using a non-Indian credit card please could you post on this thread to let us know.

For some reason Cleartrip do not list all bookable trains. The way round this is to register direct with irctc and use Amex or wait until you are in India.

Excellent Summary!!!

One note though:
"Basically the more you pay the more space you get."

This may not be true for SL v/s 3A, where you get the same space, but get A/C & linen as compensation for higher price.
Same for FC v/s 2A, where you get less space, but get A/C & linen as compensation for higher price.

SL Vs 3A - you do get more space in 3A, though at first glance it isn't noticeable, a section (6 inside & 2 side berths) in both SL & 3A appear to use the same space, however, a 3A carriage has 8 sections and a SL carriage has 9 sections. (that's why the SL side berths are so short)

The value for money question has been discussed a hundred times on Indiamike, and we collectively have hundreds of differing opinions, personally, if SL prices doubled, I'd still happily use the class, I can't say the same for 3A though.

as i understand the 9th section of SL is used by the A/C equipment & the linen storage + attendant area in 3A. of course, they may have squeezed that in 1/2 that area, so 3A has 8 compartments in the equivalent of 9 in SL.

agree with you, i did not say 3A is more value for money, just that it gives a/c & linen, which is beyond what you have in SL.

I'm flying into India again next month! This time I'm taking an India Railway train trip during my stay on the sub-continent. I recently booked with Cleartrip.com from overseas. However, I had been trying unsuccessfully during various times of the day with my Internet Explorer browser - I wasn't even able to see if train seats were still available. Out of curiosity, I switched to a Mozilla Firefox browser and had immediate success booking the two different trips (even during India peak business hours)!

Right now (as I am writing this) is India's off-peak time in the early morning. My Internet Explorer browser still can't access whether there are any seats available on Cleartrip... while Mozilla Firefox displays every availability instantaneously on Cleartrip.com. Maybe my I.E. browser has security settings causing the issue...never been an issue elsewhere. Just thought I'd share this one little thing that worked for me.

I am glad I tried Mozilla Firefox earlier today...because one of my Express trains I booked hours ago is now Wait Listing passengers!

Do you know if there is still the 10 ticket per month limit using Cleartrip or is this just on IRCTC? Also, is the limit for the month you book them or the month you will be travelling in?

Thanks

Welcome to India Mike

I'm afraid that I have never booked enough tickets in a month to know the answer to these. Cleartrip's |FAQ section doesn't seem to cover this subject. Hopefully another IMer can help out.

If you are doing that many journeys it might be worth looking at an Indrail pass.

10 Tickets a month. (Assuming none of them are cancelled).
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You can book 10 tickets in the month of January for travel in April. Another 10 in February and March each for travel in April. (Assuming ARP for all the trains is a minimum of 120 days)

There is a foreign tourist quota desk at Vasco (Goa). There used to be one at the New Delhi international airport (in the old terminal), does anybody know if there is one in the new terminal?

A clarification please. If I am booking for two people, can I book on 10 trains (ie 10 bookings per month) or 5 trains (ie 10 tickets per month), or does 1 ticket cover multiple people on the same booking.

1 ticket can be for as many as 6 persons, and you can book 10 of these tickets in a month (so up to 60 people).