Dan's Adventure

Travelling by train is incredibly popular in India and as a result trains are often fully booked weeks before their departure. For long distance journeys, tickets go on sale 90 days in advance and can be booked online through the IRCTC. Most trains in India have a tourist quota which only foreigners can book, but these tickets can only be booked at stations and are very limited. Not every train has a tourist quota and even if they do it may only be a couple of tickets. Its therefore not something that can be relied upon. The booking system is rather interesting. Once a train has become fully booked a limited number of tickets are made available on a “Reserve against Cancellation” (RAC) basis. Once these are taken you can be put on a waiting list and if someone cancels their reservation people with a RAC ticket are upgraded to a full ticket and those on the waiting list to RAC. A limited number of “Tatkal” tickets which are for immediate travel are also made available 3 days in advance, but at an increased cost. Seat 61 explains each of these ticket types in more detail. Taking all of this into consideration, I essentially have two options for booking my travel in India:

1. Wing it – On arrival in each city book a ticket using either the tourist quota if available or purchase a Tatkal ticket for the date I want to contine my journey
2. Book in advance – Use the online booking system to purchase all my tickets before I leave for Africa.

If I go for the winging it option I could end up spending days waiting on a train and consequently miss other places that I want to visit. This could potentially end up costing more as well since Tatkal tickets are more expensive than advance purchase ones.

If I book in advance I would be issued with etickets from the IRCTC website so I could book them in July since I will be in India from late September until late October. I think that since I am only spending 4 weeks in India and have planned to do a fair bit of travelling, this option makes more sense since it guarantees that I get everywhere I want to go. Before doing making any reservations I will need to plan my itinerary in far more detail so that I minimise the amount of time spent on the train and to ensure that I select days that trains are actually scheduled on the route I wish to travel.