The Great Circular Indian Railway Challenge

Not exactly breaking news, though IR are still selling tickets, so I've been told .

Part of the problem of course is that the road went with it. As a result there's a detour up the hill, so I've just asked the good people of the DHRS how long it takes in a taxi end to end these days.
These guys are running a tour which will be arriving in Siliguri on the Saturday, so if we can get some footage of David in action at Tipong they will be suitably impressed. The Rajdhani people should have enough time to pop into the Cinderella in Siliguri, which is where the DHRS will have just landed at, and submit our findings. Kanrupers will be a bit more pushed, just waiting for an estimated journey time up to Darjeeling.
Whichever train you get, the day off in Darjeeling is now looking like a medical necessity anyway.

The railways are aiming for re-opening the line in "early march", so we can assume that the direct road should be open again by end of Feb. So normal running time for a taxi up the hill, and half a chance that we'll get to ride back down on the train as originally planned.

we are all now in 3AC on the rajdhani on the Friday
we have to change from the 02435 to the 2435 at Guwahati . Not sure if we have to change places at that stage or what.

If the arunachal is a go-er when we hit Mumbai we can try and book it as an extra.

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Shankar says the coaches we are in from Tinsukia are detached at Guwahati, so yes its a forced maneuver at 5am at Guwahati, and I guess the loss of the beds being down .

Pine Villas at Udhampur have gazumped us. A wedding has appeared, they said "due to delay in confirmation" which is nonsense. They'll make a packet more out of a wedding so I dont blame them really.
I'm sure we'll work something out though it did look ideal. Well actually it was the only place I could find. We've a good stop worked out in Delhi, but we could do with a nice place to chill for the afternoon in Udhampur.
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I guess one option might be to do the washing somewhere in hotel rich Jammu then get the 4pm train up the hill, but I'd have preferred to spend the day in out of the way Udhampur.
There are several people on the train, and also in IRFCA, who have been there for exactly the same reasons we are going, so maybe someone has a tip.
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Joy at Pine Villas is going to try and find us an alternative.

I booked this train, 12435 25/2 ... 2A/3A was NA; so booked 1A from DBRT-NJP (boarding:TSK)
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Hi everybody

I stumbled upon the GCIRC blog by accident yesterday which whetted my appetite and I followed the links to this thread which I have just finished reading from the start. My wife thinks I've got a screw loose but hey. The story would make a tremendous movie - humour, suspense, scenery, participation from around the globe.

I wish that I had found you earlier before I committed to a rather more sedate rail tour of Rajasthan (Gurjars permitting) followed by a DHRS pilgrimage to Siliguri and Darjeeling. I will keep my eyes out for you all as current plans should put us in Siliguri at around the same time. IT permitting I will be monitoring your progress as we travel.

You might have seen this video but I didn't see it mentioned in the posts - apologies if it is old hat for you.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzEKCYb6zzU&


Best of luck to all of you

Dave W

PS Let me know when planning starts for the next run

Hi Dave,
Great video. I'll insist that we all change trains in conga style.
I'll need counseling after all this, as long as I make it out of Heathrow and to the starting grid with all the passes I'll be able to relax. We've a string of serious bloggers and photographers in the crew, so we should be able to make quite a footprint in the blogosphere and more people will have a go. There's a million and one ways to do it.
I hope we can all meet up at Siliguri with some Tipong video for the DHRS gang to view. Everybody should be quite beaten up by then anyway.

Dave,

Thanks for the nice video link .

Never seen it before, though the background music/song, by Ashok Kumar, is/was quite popular in India.

I thought this video-clip perfectly symbolised our GCIRC madness!
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Listen this song of 1942 sung by Kanan Devi in Bengali.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z-2n...eature=related

I heard the Hindi audio version of the song. The lyric appears simple but there is a philosophy behind it.

Sadanand

@SK:

You must have heard this Hindi version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Nms...eature=related

There is also one by Lata Mangeshkar as shraddhanjali to Kanan Devi here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-Iid...eature=related
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Glad that you enjoyed the video. It struck me as appropriate to your challenge and makes me smile every time I watch it.

It's a shame that you aren't using the Toofan - you could have had a singalong as you travelled on it.

Are there any other Indian train songs or is this getting too much like off topic?

Dave

they make excellent blog post content, keep them coming.

You mean only the songs on rails or you would consider songs in a moving train etc too? Here is one very famous one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVKwLs23D_I

that's excellent.

In that case there are more. Here is another very famous song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1MykK4u8U