Traveling by Train

Trains… When I was a small kid this very word used to bring cute little steam engines puffing fluffy gray clouds in my mind. Naaaa…. I’ve never been on one, but I’ve seen a lot of them, as a kid on my darling idiot box. Before you ask me why I bestowed such an elaborate title on my TV.. It’s because it’s the only box I used to hate to love and love to hate. Confused??? Keep guessing..

But during the last 2 months if the same word ‘train’ is used to coin a question to me like “Have you booked your train ticket to Goa?” its more than enough to give me a nightmare. L

It all started when I shifted to Silvassa. I realized that if I travel by bus from Silvassa to Goa in a break journey format (Silvassa/Vapi-Mumbai & Mumbai-Goa), I’d not only be doing a break dance in the 2 buses but I would also be forced to travel very frequently to the physiotherapist and the doc for my aching limbs and probably broken back.

This time when I went to Goa for my cousin’s wedding in October, I bought the Trains at a Glance (book) from Mumbai but that proved to be useless as Vapi is not listed as a major railway station there. So, I went online to check for trains. The Indian Railways has a website where one can get a lot of info about trains.

I got my tickets booked to Goa and since my Mom, Aunt & cousins wanted to come back with me we got our tickets booked 2 months in advance.

2 months in advance. Yeah, I know.. Big trouble. We got tickets with fancy WL-XYZ and PNR nos printed on them. Railway Booking to any destination in India starts 3 months in advance. Which means one has to plan his/her journey well ahead. If one goes even a day later most of the tickets are already taken. I guess this is ‘coz the Travel Agents play a nice trick by booking all the tickets in their name and then releasing them as and when they get Bhakras.

Anyway, I’ve learnt a good lesson about booking tickets. The best bet is to book your ticket 3 months in advance and then if you can’t go as planned cancel your ticket. It’s a hundred times better to pay the cancellation fee then to spend sleepless nights thinking about your waitlisted ticket.

Hmmmm… When I was in Pune I used to mostly travel by bus. Booking a bus ticket was never a hassle with telephone booking. I used to book tickets over the telephone and pay the amount on the day of the journey. This also implies that I used to book tickets last minute and also cancel and book the same as per my convenience.

The bad decision maker that I am, the days that preceded the journey were filled with FPC (Frequent Phone Calls) to my Mom filled with FAQ like, “Should I leave tomorrow or the day after?” “Should I leave on the 3rd or the 4th or the 5th ?” Hence, most of my trips used to be on the spur of the moment, so much so that sometimes I used to book a ticket on the same day (sometimes even in the afternoon) of the journey.

Added to that the lone train which used to run on the Goa-Pune route was not a direct train. It’s a Goa-Delhi train with Pune as one of the stops in between. It also had real odd timings (it arrives at 4 am in Pune & since I always traveled alone there was this eerie feeling of what if I remain sleeping?) So traveling by train for me was a big No-No. But my bike has been twice on that route (my very lucky bikey).

But now after gaining some experience in long distance travel via train I wish I had traveled by train on the Goa-Pune route.. Even if I would have remained fast asleep in the train I would probably wake up and find myself in a new place.. Wow!! Adventure… Cool eh???

Its not that I’ve never traveled by train. The first time I traveled by train was from Goa to Mumbai. Then also to Karnataka and probably close to a dozen times on the Pune-Mumbai route. But these journeys have all been short distance ones (except for the Goa-Mumbai one which was planned well in advance) so there never has been a hassle involved in booking tickets.

Anyway, back to the tickets.. Our ticket nos read WL-7,8,9,10 & 11. What ensued next was that my aunt and I had to go on an educational spree asking people the million dollar question, “Will our tickets be confirmed?”

Everyone had his or her own opinion. Mind you, people can be really challu*… They don’t wanna make you feel bad so they mostly prefer answering in the affirmative. We were told not to worry and our tickets would be confirmed. Different people gave us different opinions:
1) Many people cancel their tickets so your no would surely go in the Confirmation List. [What if they don’t cancel????????]
2) You have to be after the TC to confirm your seats. Maybe even give him a small little bribe. [Eeeeeeh…. That’s unethical..]
3) Pray and pray and pray to God. [Yeah, I did pray. Only difference was that I prayed that people on the Confirmed List should cancel their tickets]
4) I was also told that if you’re on the Waiting List in the General Compartment, sometimes they even add a General boogie compartment if the Waiting List nos. are high but in our case we had AC tickets so whether they would add a boogie or not it would be of no help to us. [We would probably have to do the Boogie Boggie Dance in or on (the top of) the Train to get a seat..]
5) Then one of my office colleagues told me that AC tickets were the most difficult ones to get confirmed. And he related his experience when he had to go on a long distance train with a Wait Listed Ticket standing in the small place between the train doors.. [Yeah.. hold your nose.. Its the same space which is near the loo..]

Anyway, keeping all these opinions in mind we would check faithfully every alternate day the status of our tickets. My aunt over the phone & me online.

Sometimes, we would debate whether we should cancel the tickets v/s taking Tatkal tickets. We ultimately decided on settling for the ‘Let’s wait and see’ option. Further research on the Internet gave us Guidelines & Cancellation terms and conditions. There are a lot of rules and of course there’s fine print too. We also saw that the Railways very cleverly woo you with the tricky sentence, ‘Railway Chart can change last minute.’

Slowly our ticket nos crawled up.. From WL 7 to 6 to 5.. and ultimately it became confirmed a day prior to the journey. Kindly refer to my next posting on the Journey back to Silvassa for further details about the so-called confirmation.

So, its only after shifting to Silvassa that I’ve literally been forced to learn the A-Z of Indian Railways. For coaching classes on the same you can always contact me although I think the above write up is more than enough..

*The meaning of Challu = Smartie Smart. There can be different versions of the word Challu if you didn’t know. Eg. Naughty Challu, Evil Challu, Matlabi Challu, Bugging Challu, etc.. etc..