Apr 19 2009

From Calm Alwar To Crazy Delhi

Today we left Alwar and headed by train to Delhi.

This time we travelled in two-tier air con class, which was a cross between the two other classes we'd tried so far. I'd be happy to use this for an overnight trip, as opposed to three tier AC (3AC) but I think I'd go 3AC for day trips in the future.

The train was an hour late, which was expected at Alwar as it's already done 1000km before it reaches there. So all in all, over four trains, only one was late and only by an hour. Not bad.

Arrival at (Old) Delhi station was surprising as it's Sunday today, a day of rest for most Indians, yet the station was rammed and I literally had to barge my way throw the passengers to get anywhere. It's not something I like doing but once I got in the swing of it I turned out to be rather good at it. Things I never knew.

Out of the station and we're accosted by 4 autorickshaw owners - why didn't I notice the pre-paid autorickshaw counter?. I guess a local could get the fare for Rs50 or maybe Rs100 but I've already decided that I just want to get to my hotel so I'll settle for Rs200 - they're hardly rich those rickshaw drivers so I don't mind over paying a little. He starts off a Rs350 (only a fiver) and I utter the phrase "do I look like I've just arrived in India". The dust and dirt on my three-quarter-lengths tells him I've been here a while and he drops the price to Rs300. "You are just joking right?". Rs250. I pick up the cases already loaded into the van and leave. "One last chance" I say adn he drops to Rs200. That'll do, I know I've been fleeced, but I just don't care, get me out of here.

We arrive at the oasis that is the Ginger Hotel, a no thrills hotel where rooms cost Rs1000 per night. It's so clean, laminate floors and marble everywhere, LCD TVs and air-con. The kids check out Star Movies and the settle down to watch their first film of the trip - Runaway Bride. Dad buys a 24hr internet access card (Rs338) and starts blogging.

Tonight we're hopefully going to find Karim's restaurant, an institution in Delhi service great shami/sheesh kebabs and the like. But it's apparently a nightmare to find in the old heavily populated streets of Old Delhi. Let's hope we don't see a McDonalds on the way and bottle it.

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Apr 16 2009

Sad To Leave Ranthambhore

After our fourth night we're all quite sad to be leaving Ranthambhore but an adventure awaits: we're catching two trains to be able to get to Alwar and there's only just over an hour between arriving at Jaipur and leaving there on our second train to Alwar. If our first train is late arriving by 45 minutes, we're gonna miss our second one and face a three hour taxi ride for £30, which I'd rather not have to do.

We arrive at Sawai Madhopur station thinking about quitting the trains and going back to the hotel for another couple of nights. This wouldn't be a problem with the hotel as they're not very busy at this time of year and we'd only lose 25 quid on the train fares. But we press on and wait to catch the train.

Our spirits are lifted by six or so local kids all waiting to catch the train, they're so smiley at seeing us - yes Dawes, even me! - and they lift our spirits. I take a photo and they're amazed to see themselves on the screen; turns out to be one of favourite photos.

The train arrives and departs on time, it's clean and we've got the six seats (actually two long comfortable benches) to ourselves for the two hour trip to Jaipur. We play cards, read and I listen to some music on my phone (Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack of course).

The train arrives at Jaipur on time. Phew!

A quick platform change happens with me wishing we'd packed less and we wait for the second train which again arrives and departs on time.

During the trip we decide which hotel to stay at, it's between the Alwar Bagh (as recommended by Indiamiker Puchoo) or Hotel Aravalli (as recommended by...absolutely no-one, but it's cheap!). A fellow traveller looks at my internet printouts about the hotels and tells that the Bagh looks nice but he doesn't know it and that the Hotel Aravalli is.."not bad". (He doesn't mean this in the English usage of "not bad" (as in quite good) but just that it isn't bad, but it definitely isn't good! We agree to have a look at the Hotel Aravalli and see what it's like that is until the train slows down and we see it from the window: "We'll stay at the Alwar Bagh I think" I say.

A crowd gathers as we get out of the station. Autorickshaw drivers hassle us for the business, it's 15km to the hotel. The first one asks for just 200 rupees and I can't be bothered to haggle, it's less than 3 pounds, for 10 miles, and he's got the return journey to do. The other drivers discuss in Hindi that we've been ripped off big time. Three quid: I don't care

What a good choice that turns out to be. It's beautiful (do I have any other adjectives for hotels?) and has a couple of acres, with two pools and five separate buildings for the rooms and restaurant etc. We splurge and take a suite which at Rs4000 is quite dear, but it really is lovely...look it up in Google.

As I write this the sun has just gone down (7:16) and it's dark, I'm outside using the owner's laptop (with a wireless broadband connection faster than my one at home - Hayward: leave it!) with the Aravalli hills silhouetted against the dusk sky. "Beautiful" is the correct adjective I think - yet again.  

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Apr 14 2009

The Overnight Train From Udaipur To Jaipur

Those that have spoken to me about catching the overnight train will know that it's something I was anxious about. Being a Dad just means that you get to carry all the luggage and with a suitcase/rucsack each plus a backpack I've got a lot of carrying to do. Train stations in India are very busy and apparently you're likely to get your wallet lifted - although I'd fancy my chances here more than at night in Fareham, Southampton or Portsmouth.

We arrive at the station and I check our tickets are okay and which carriage we're on and which first class cabins we've got allocated. Looks like we're split up but never mind, we'll cope.

So we find out where our carriage will stop and we wait. I notice a family of 11 waiting too and I guess they're on First Class too. The train pulls in and our carriage has a cross between two-tier air con class and first class which means there's only about 10 first class berths. The doors open and the French family rush on board and claim all 10 first class berths! We get on and have nowhere to go. Great, I think, but I've got confirmed tickets and my name is on chart on the outside of the train. I check their e-ticket, they booked after me and only have 5 confirmed tickets, the other 6 are waitlisted (see other train booking article for info). They're in trouble, I'm not.

The daughter speaks fluent English so I explain their situation. They're not best pleased and I get the feeling that the Dad is going to get an ear-battering if they ever get to their destination, Agra.

The Train Ticket Examiner arrives, explains the situation as I did but they argue. So I tell them that he's offered them a way out with 6 berths in three-tier AC class. Either that or 6 passengers are staying in Udaipur.

Eventually they vacate our rooms and we go to sleep...and I haven't even mentioned Agincourt! (Emilie, Caro and Nico: sorry, it's an English joke, hope you're not offended.)

We arrive an hour late at 7am at Jaipur and eventually find our driver to take us to Ranthambhore, home of the tigers, and I'm relieved on three counts: we survived the train; we've got a taxi; this means that our reservation at the Raj Palace is good too as they sent the taxi to Jaipur.

So all my worries were unfounded and I'm really glad that I'd read (IndiaMike's) Steven_ber's brilliant article about wait listed train tickets before I got to India. Shame those French people didn't.

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Jan 14 2009

Booking Trains

In England you don't really need to book a train, you just turn up, hand over a lung, kidney or your left arm, and you're on the train.

In India you really need to book in advance, up to 91 days in advance, to make sure you can travel on the day you want to and in the class of train you want. This is a great advert for how public transport in England needs to transform: lower the prices, get people booking up early and make sure all your trains are full.

For more information about trains see this earlier blog entry: How Do You Want To Travel Around? 

The web site for booking India trains direct is www.irctc.co.in and it's fairly straightforward to use, albeit a little quirky. TOP TIP: when trying to pay by credit card select the AXIS bank as it accepts international credit cards.

IRCTC is no good for trying to find the train you wish to book. To do this use a combination of www.erail.in and http://indiarailinfo.com as they're much more user friendly. The site www.erail.in is my favourite for layout but indiarailinfo.com tells you the average delay times. TOP TIP: the shorter the journey a train has before your station of departure the more likely it'll be on time, especially if it starts at that station.

I'll focus now on www.erail.in as I used it the most.

Enter the start and stop stations and get a list of trains:



Select the train that suits your day of travel - in this example I chose the 2966. The information about the train, the stations, the cost per person in the different classes appears. Note that children under 12 (I think) only pay half the fare shown. So it costs one adult about £4 in sleeper class or £20 in luxurious first class sleeper, for 435 kilometres. If you're a family of four, like us, you'll pay about £50 to travel overnight on this route a first class cabin of your own, with a lock on it!


 

You can even see the whole route the train takes:



Now you need to decide which class of travel you're interested in by clicking the AV hyperlink in the relevant class column, e.g 1A, 2A, 3A, SL. The availability for that class and the class below it appear for the date you have selected for and a few days afterward. (For this picture I've picked a different train, one that's pretty well booked up.)

Looks fairly complicated but it's not really. Here's a rough explanation but to find out more have a good read of the brilliant article by Indiamike's steven_ber called Indian Railways RAC and Waitlists concepts explained.

  • AVAILABLE-0004 and AVAILABLE-0006 means that there are currently 4 seats (in class 2A) and 6 seats (in class 3A) available on the train for 24/2/2009. If you book now you'll get confirmed seat numbers and a (pretty much) definite place on the train.
  • NOTE: at this point I'm happy to say that I booked up all my tickets three months in advance and all the ones I wanted were available. So I've never had to go through what is explained below. I hope I've got the explaination right!
  • RAC2/RAC2 means that you will be buying a ticket which is 'reserved against cancellation'. This means that you will get on the train but may not get a berth, you may just get a seat, unless there's a cancellation.
  • WL8/WL6 and WL19/WL11 means that there is a waiting list on the train on 21/2/2009, beyond the RAC status tickets. The first set of numbers (WL8 and WL19) indicate the number of wait list tickets sold. It's not as important as the second set of numbers which indicate where you are in the queue.
  • Wait Lists - think of it like this: you join a queue for Wimbledon tickets for the match in a month's time, there's 100 tickets available and 110 people in front of you, you want 2 tickets. The confirmed tickets go to the first 100 people. You buy two wait list tickets WL111 and WL112 and wait. A few days later two people who bought WL104 and WL105 realise they can't go and pull out, even though they haven't actually got a ticket anyway. Your tickets become WL111/WL109 and WL112/WL110; you've moved up two places in the queue. With a week to go a block booking pulls out and suddenly there's after 15 tickets to be allocated to the next 15 in the wait list queue, that'll be you then; your tickets become WL111/CNF and WL112/CNF but you don't know where you're going to sit. On the match day the seating charts are prepared an hour or so before the game and you find out where you're sitting. Simple.

 

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Nov 06 2008

Step 3: How Do You Want To Travel Around?

In true Kev fashion, step 3 started at the same time as step 2, which of course was well before step 1. But hey, that's the first rule of project management isn't it: define your deadline and work backwards.

So just how do you travel around in India? I think you can break this down to three types of people:

  1. The Trophy Hunter. Typically really want to go somewhere to add it to their list and have photos of it. Travel in planes, want to see the sights but don't want to integrate with the locals whatsoever. Absolutely can't stay anywhere without a swimming pool or a Michelin chef. Trains are no problem as long as there's silver service and a pianist.
  2. The Integrators: Typically want to 'feel' the place they're going to. Eat where the locals eat, travel like the locals and perhaps try to speak like the locals.
  3. Me (and many others): Typically wanting to be an Integrator but a little scared about what might happen and certainly without the money of the Trophy Hunter.

For me, planes are out unless absolutely necessary and as it works out, for this trip, they're not.

I'm prepared to travel on a train, but first class, second class or third class, but I'm not ready for sleeper class yet. For more information see: http://www.seat61.com/India.htm.

Trains are probably the cheapest way to get around in India but it's no good if the train times don't suit or there's no station near where you're going.

How about taxis? Hiring a taxi from place to place is a good idea but you've always got to pay the driver for a round-trip as he's got to get back home. But the cost of labour is cheap in India so it is an ideal place for hiring a car+driver for whatever time.

The decision was made: we'll travel by car+driver to start with and once we're a bit more confident we'll take the train. Out of the air we plucked the time when we'd switch to trains as 12 days in, halfway through our trip.

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