Impeccable Food Service on the Rajdhani and Shatabdi

--- Warning: Reading this might make you very hungry!

Last week, i had to take the Rajdhani to Delhi and there the Shatabdi to Bhopal. In both cases I travelled First Class AC and the catering onboard the trains was fantastic!

Since the Rajdhani 2951A Special train starts at the unholy hour of 2300 hours from BCT, there was no dinner service. In the morning, the coach attendant was keeping a watch for people waking up and bought in the bed tea tray. I woke up at 530 am and went for my morning rituals and by the time I returned, a table had been setup in my coupe with the bed tea tray, containing Marie biscuits, a weird sweet and a flask of black tea with the milk separate. A nice touch was a cane basket containing not just sachets of regular sugar but also "sugar free": useful for diabetics or weight watchers! My companions in the coupe snored away till 0730 and they in turn got their bed tea served as soon as they woke up.

We were to reach Ratlam at 0930 (the rajdhani special unlike the regular rajdhani, has a more leisurely run between BRC and RTM) and breakfast was setup around 0830. We were first served fruit juice: in 1A this is in real glasses not in tetrapaks as in 2A. We were asked for our preferences at this time: choice being Indian Veg and Western Veg/Non Veg. While they got busy fetching our choices from the Pantry Car next door, the attendants put down our first course with the usual Cornflakes and Hot/Cold Milk. for the main course, i chose the Western Vegetarian option and was served Cutlets with boiled vegetables. The Indian veg option had substantially larger portions with Upma, a single medu wada and idali with sambar and chutney. The western non-veg option was cheese omelettes but nobody in our coupe opted for that. The meal was rounded off with a tray containing a flask of black tea and a cup of hot milk.

we had barely digested our meal when the attendants came in at 1130 to ask for meal preferences for the lunch. Again 4 options Indian and western, each with veg and non-veg. Around 1300 hours, lunch service commenced which took a leisurely 1 hour to complete!

First course was soup served with breadsticks. Second was the appetiser round, where I was served some Boiled Vegetables Patties with a weird Chicken and mashed Potato filling. Weird but nice. I had opted for the Western Non-Veg option and the offering today was Roasted Chicken marinated in some french sounding weirdness. Whatever it was, it was DELICIOUS. The other meal options were similar except the entree's were switched. The indian non-veg option was chicken makhni while the indian veg option had paneer.

This substantial lunch was topped off with some fabulous strawberry ice cream!

Around 1630 as we crossed Mathura, the attendants bought in the tea trays with a snack. Apart from the tea, the tray had a snack box from "Haldirams" consisting of 2 rather large Kachori's (a savoury snack) and a sweet called Son-Papdi. We were already stuffed from the lunch, but the smell of the Kachoris was too tempting to resist!

Barely 45 minutes later as we were on the outskirts of delhi, the attendants bought in a tray containing a prepacked collection of chocolates from a reputed company along with a tetrapak juice. Also on the tray was basket where we were supposed to leave our tip.

Each of us in the coupe put in 50 rupees each (around 1$)! Couldnt risk tipping a french speaking attendant the usual 10 bucks!

All in all a great food experience on the Rajdhani. When i mentioned this to the TTE on the coach, he said that the catering is so good because on the Rajdhani's the Railways does it themselves instead of outsourcing it to a contractor as on other trains.

Also the service for First AC is handled by fresh graduates from a reputed Catering Institute in Kolkata! Which perhaps explains the "french" speaking attendant!

Apart from the high standard of catering, the overall service level was top-notch with courteous and watchful attendants. In the night an attendant ASKED each one of us whether he could make the bed for us and waited outside till each one of us was ready. In the morning, the attendant kept an eye on people waking up and made sure the bed tea was on time! Fantastic service indeed!

PS: A surprising observation was that none of the food was overtly oily or spicy: infact even the indian food was "spiced down": perhaps with an eye on western tourists who might take the 1A option. However on that particular day, there were just 2 elderly westerners onboard, with the others being all indian.

*pinches self.

you talking about Indian Railways, right?

I've always had good food on the Rajdhani (even in 2/AC) and plenty of it.

What a great write up, thanks Cougar for taking the time to provide so much detail.

It's really different in 1AC. Once I had booked 2 AC for travelling from Kolkata to New Delhi on Sealdah Rajdhani, when I went to board the train, I was pleasantly surprised to find my self upgraded to 1AC.

I had fun and yes the food was served in proper china on a folding table. Soft drinks and Hot Beverages were available on demand.

It was really a great experience.

After 2 days in Delhi, i had to leave for Sagar in MP for some work. The only direct train to this god-forsaken place is a train called the Gondwana Express which was fully booked out. The only alternative was to go via Bina or Bhopal.

The 2002 Shatabdi Express is supposed to be the fastest in India and the only reason I took chose this option instead of an overnight train was to experience the fantastic run that this train supposedly enjoys after Mathura.

So on a Monday morning, I found myself on the Shatabdi to Bhopal. Like the Mumbai Rajdhani, this train also has the newer LHB coaches of German design allowing for higher speeds. On that particular day, the BPL Shatabdi had 9 Chair Car Coaches, which corresponds to 2nd Class AC and features 2x3 seating layout and a single Executive Class coach seating just 46 people in a more luxorious 2x2 layout with greater leg room. In addition there is one generator cum luggage van at each end making for a total of 12 coaches in all hauled by single WAP5 loco.

The BPL Shatabdi being one of the more prestigious trains on the IR network, also features attendants in special uniforms and has service of a higher grade than normal.

Onboard Service:
Immediately on boarding, an attendant came around distributing a welcome drink in tetra-paks and a single water bottle. There was some argument with passengers who asked for an extra bottle who were told that Railways provides a single 1-litre bottle for a 20 hour journey and additional water may be purchased from outside! Then came the surprise: The catering supervisor, probably another fresh graduate from a catering institute doing his internship, made the rounds of the coach and as each passenger boarded handed them a rose welcoming them onboard and requested that all complaints suggestions be sent to him! Cheesy but hey!

Even as we pulled out of a haze covered New Delhi, we were served breakfast which started with fresh juice, followed by Cornflakes and milk. The Indian Vegetarian option, the clear favorite onboard that day, was the standard Upma+Idli-wada deal with Sambar. While the sambar was ok, the chutney was clearly stale and the staff had a tough time dealing with irate passengers. The other options were Fresh Fruit Plate and Cheese Omeletes with toast. The meal trays were cleared and replaced with Tea Trays. No "Sugar free" here though: just standard sugar cubes.

Around 930 the train reached Gwalior where half the coach emptied out. Around a dozen people boarded for BPL and Tea/Cofee service was offered to the boarding passengers. The attendant who bought the tea tray for the person sitting next to me, asked me if i would like some more tea and did bring it over! Nice touch!

The Shatabdi Expresses dont have pantry cars like other trains: instead a section of each coach is set aside for a hot galley very much like an airline galley. in some of the older Shatabdi coaches (non LHB), one of the 4 toilets in every coach is replaced by a mini-pantry. So as the staff started preparing for Lunch service immediately after Jhansi, the entire coach started getting restless as the smell of food being heated spread across the coach!

Lunch began with the usual Soup + Breadsticks at which point our choice was asked for. The only difference between the Indian veg and non-veg options was the entree (chicken and paneer respectively) so while one attendant placed the meal trays, the other attendant placed the entree of choice. Those opting for the Continental Non-Veg option were served first to simplify the service model. Efficient! The whole service was rounded off with some butter-scotch ice-cream.

20 minutes before arrival in BPL they came around with the takeaway "chocolate packs" and ofcourse the tip box. From the overflowing basket, it became clear that 1A passengers are generous tippers indeed!

The Shatabdi service was clearly outsourced to an outside contractor and while it wasnt bad at all, it certainly was lower than what I had seen 3 days earlier on the Rajdhani. The staff are clearly put through a regimented training and it shows in the stiff and military like service approach rather than friendly. But professional nevertheless.

Other notes: While the train departed and arrived on time, i clearly missed the so called 150 kph+ high-speed run. I have often been told on another forum that my GPS, which has once showed 118kph on a Mumbai Pune run (Intercity Express), errs on the higher side. But in this case, the GPS recorded the max speed on the NDLS-BPL segment as 137 kph. And most of the time, it was hovering around the 115-120 kph mark.

Nevertheless, the BPL shatabdi is certainly one of the faster ways to get to Bhopal. Another Mumbai bound Superfast, departed NDLS half an hour before our Shatabdi, but pulled into Bhopal a good 4 hours after the Shatabdi!