My First Train Experience: Glad I Read IMs Stickies First

OceanTragic

My first train experience was an overnight from Udaipur from Jaipur. A little worried about the whole thing as I was travelling with my wife and 11 and 8 year old girls, I booked four 1AC berths.

I arrived at the station a little nervous: would the train be on time?; will we get our seats?; will I get mugged in the station?

All of this was totally unfounded, the station wasn't busy, the train arrived on time, our seats were fine - although I can't understand why, when I know I was the first person to book any 1AC seats and the train started from Udaipur, wasn't my family allocated to a single 4-berth cabin?

Anyway, it didn't go without a hitch (but I'm really glad I read the train stickies in this forum beforehand):

A large family (11 of them) were waiting to board the carriage and got to 1AC and took all "their" seats, all 10 of them.
They're French and the daughter speaks fluent English which pleases me as I've only in my 2nd year of French evening classes at the moment.
She says that they've paid and their credit card has been debited so these 10 seats are theirs, they booked 11 and don't seem too bothered about the missing one.
Confidently I show them my eTicket and ask to see theirs. They've got 4 confirmed, 7 waitlisted on their ticket so I check the chart on the side of the train with them. They've managed to get one more 1AC so 5 into total, the other six are waitlisted.
I explain waitlisting from my knowledge gained here (phew!) and wait for the TTE to turn up, knowing that I'll be okay.
Eventually the TTE turns up and shifts 6 of them to 3AC, they've got lucky I think, at least they'll get to Agra.

The full article is here on my blog if you wish to read more.

Ignite

I'm glad everything worked out.

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Krle

Eleven of them and they were French, not Indian?

Man, you have to make more of them kids, or else next time those French folks are going to push you out of the train! Beaten by 11:4

OceanTragic

Don't get me wrong, I love the French.

They were sufficiently beaten by my knowledge of waitlists gained reading the excellent articles on IndiaMike.

I do wonder why when they booked 11 tickets and 4 said 'CONFIRM' and the others said WL1, WL2 etc, didn't they look up somewhere to see what WL meant. If they had they wouldn't have had the problems they did.

delhiwala

You should have introduced them to IndiaMike......

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Haylo

It's great to hear that, instead of the usual "I wish I'd found this site before"

Happy to hear it went so well and your knowledge was so useful, I still haven't had occasion to travel by train in India, so it was fun reading a "first timers" account.

It all certainly seems more complicated than catching a train at, say, Waterloo station...

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steven_ber

I bet you felt good knowing about the waitlists.

I've had some Indian people trying to explain waitlists to me, a lot of them really havn't got a clue about them, but I usually just smile and say "thank you for your help".

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How to get helpful replies to your transport/Itinerary questions.


Train information.


RAC & Waitlists explained.

Haylo

You don't carry printed copies of your articles to hand out?

delhiwala

That's called Teaching the Teachers..............We Indians consider ourselves supersmart.......However, I have noticed that most of the Westerners know more than us about our systems........

OceanTragic

We took four trains in all in 1AC, 2AC and 3AC (x2). Only one was late, by an hour, all the others were on time and nice and clean too.

The experience was great and so relaxing, once the French incident had passed. Playing cards, sleeping, listening to music and watching the world go by: yes, contrary to popular belief AC windows are not too dark to see through.

I'd say it's easier than catching a train from Waterloo, Udaipur only seemed to have a couple of platforms, same for Sawai Madhopur and Alwar. Jaipur and (Old) Delhi seemed a fair bit bigger.

We nearly got robbed in Delhi station but this was the worst of it, nothing was taken. We met lots of very friendly people in the stations, made the experience so much better.

The porters though we're rubbish, only used them twice.

Digital Drifter

fancy that. Someone actually learnt from Steve's article!

Going by the number of posts in the Railways, I was pretty confident Steve was nutters to even try his hand at teaching this stuff.

Might as well spend time teaching his cats to speak.

Still, it's a perverse joy to see Steve keep it all in and not explode when Yet Another Repeat Question on Waitlists post appears.

He could start writing a book at this rate. Not that it'll help.

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Casey

I find I spend plenty of time worrying and things usually always work out. When they don't, it just works out another way. I was amazed when I was leaving Hampi to see the amount of people who bought their tickets from "Travel Agents" and were waitlisted really hight (67 and 68) and had no idea what this meant.

steven_ber

I've exploded a few times, but the posts have been deleted.

Now, I won't answer posts in that thread unless the member is a regular indiamiker who spends time helping others on the site.

Not that it makes a lot of difference, VSP is 100 times better than me at answering those questions.

The waitlists for the train to Goa are very very high, yet they nearly always get confirmed, this is because the train uses side middle berths, but the Indian Railways computer doesn't recognise this fact, so there's an additional 9 berths in every Sleeper Class carriage (maybe 10-12 carriages).

This may have changed by now, or may change very soon, and when that happens, the travel agents will make a killing by bribing officials to sell them emergency quota tickets, and passing on the cost (and a whole lot more) to tourists.

LunavadaLad

With the great work Steve has done on educating us on all things we are noing about INDIAN TRAINS and the RAIL SYSTEM I am very confident that on my second trip to India catching trains well be as easy as it is in my home town. Other people have also contributed to my noing and thanks.

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If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home. ~James Michener

Keshava

Sure why not eleven? The French Catholics are freaking out at the way the way Muslims are multiplying in France and it's become a competition.! In another 50 years France will be the new India.