Myself and partner are arriving in new dehli on the 6TH october and would interested in hearing anyones experience of trian travel between Dehli and the hill stations and also varanasi and the Golden triangle .We are hoping to as much of or travel by train or by car for the smaller journey s any helpfull tips would be appreciated.Joe/Pam

Train travel in India is a great way to go. I've done the Delhi- Varanasi night trip, Udaipur- Ranthambore overnight and a few other day trips. I wanted to go up to shimla on the toy train,but they are not really reliable, so we flew instead.

If you can afford it, its nice to hire a car for some of your trip, so you can get out on the road.

My daughter took the Delhi -Siliguri trip, then up to Darjeeling on the shared jeeps rather than the toy train.

Indiamike.com has a lot of info on travel in India, as well as links to the IndiaRail site. I recommend getting tickets on line or have your hotel get them, as it is always so confusing at the stations.

Hi Joe/Pam, I think splitting the trip up between train and car travel is a really good idea. We took an overnight train from Mumbai to Ahmedabad and that worked out really great. We booked the tickets in advance on irctc.co.in. We used a car and driver for several weeks of the trip, which was very comfortable and convenient (with the exception of a big problem we had with our first driver -- see my trip report if you want to read about our experience: http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...-travelawg.cfm). Car travel gets you out into the countryside and allows you to stop whenever you please. Just driving along the Indian highways (if you can call them that) is fascinating. We also took a train from Agra to Jhansi, which was just ok -- but apparently much better than taking the road between those two cities. From Khajuraho to Varansi we flew on Jet Airlines. Once you decide where you want to go, explore the options -- car, plane or train -- to see what works best for you. As I have done several times on this forum, of the drivers we had in India, I heartily recommend Ramesh Meena -- he was a terrific driver -- safe, professional, friendly and very helpful. His contact info: phone numbers - 919829807074 and 91925246594; email addresses - [email protected] and [email protected]. Other posters have have had good experiences with other drivers -- hopefully they will post their recommendations for you as well. Hope you have a great trip! - trav

Thanks for your quick reply i am having a look at your blog lots of information and it will be very useful.Will give you fuller comment later joe/pam

Another good site for Indian trains is seat61.com I spent 10 weeks traveling around India by train - see wilhelmswords.com