India: how reliable are train connections?
 

The itinerary that we are planning for October involves one or two instances of train connections where we have only around forty-five minutes to make the connection. One of these is the overnight train from Jaipur to Jodhpur, which supposedly connects with the morning train from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer (don't worry, we can spend a full day in Jodhpur on the way back). Now, if this were Germany, for instance, I wouldn't have a moment's worry. But I don't know whether Indian trains are quite as famous for their punctuality as German trains . And a missed connection could easily mean a wait of twelve hours or more!

Should I plan with confidence, or would I be wise to allow a few hours' grace in case of delays? If the latter, is there a budget-but-not-too-dire hotel near the main station at Jodhpur so that we can make an early departure?

Thanks again!

Never been to India, however I remember an episode on Lonely Planet in which Ian was travelling thru India and remarked on how unreliable the train schedule was. Not sure if this still holds true. I miss those old Lonely planet shows with Ian and Justine.

Alan
It's been several years since I travelled on trains in India, Howver I would say they were not famed for punctuality then, and from what I hear from my sister who travles a fair bit on trains in India - that has not changed.
I am now completely fascinated by your trip - please do post a trip report - love your attitude and sense of adventure - very essential for travel in India. :)

Those are my favorite's as well...But you can still catch them on Pilot Guides...Ian, Jusitine and Megan McCormack..Some are repeats but there are also some new ones...I have seen some of those repeats 10 times each!!

It sounds, indie and SamH, that I will feel quite at home travelling by train in India. Here in Sydney, Australia, the trains never seem to run to time, either. The runour is that one of our trains DID come in on time once, so 90% of the passengers missed it!

I will reorganise my schedule so as to allow more time... maybe a night's stopover, to be on the safe side.

What I really need is a more direct route, and I have asked about this on another thread (below). As much as I am looking forward to the train component of our India holiday, I don't want to do unnecessary backtracking miles and spend more time getting from Point A to Point B than I do enjoying the sights of the destinations! So if you have any ideas on how to avoid back-tracking on the route Mumbai-Jaipur-Udaipur-Jodhpur-Jaisalmer, then I'd love to know about them!

Thanks for your advice, past AND future!

Hello again - look, never been to Mumbai in 3 visits - but Udaipur is not well connected to anywhere on yr list but Delhi. So if I were you I would fly Mumbai to Udaipur. Then train to Delhi and out again to Jaipur.
Jopdhur and Jaiselmer then follow on. You may be able to change trains at Ajmer to avoid going into New Delhi - sorry don't have my Trains at a Glance to hand.

Re not running to time - once spent from 0400 to 1800 waiting for a train on the line from Ahmedabad to Cochin. Ate lots of lovely bread omelettes and got to know the station staff well!!

Nuff said.

Alice13, that's a tale worth remembering!

I read this and your reply on the other thread (for both of which I am grateful), and it does seem that, in this case, father (being the Indian Rail site) knows best. Maybe I should just stick with the way I had planned: Mumbai-Jaipur-Udaipur-Jaipur-Jodhpur-Jaisalmer-Jodhpur-Agra-Delhi, and consider myself lucky that many of these trains are fast expresses and do the leg overnight. Or maybe there's a bus from Udaipur to Abu Rd (from where there are trains to Jodhpur virtually all day, taking only about five hours for the trip.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

Alan - a little story, not about trains but planes that you might find interesting/amusing.
We had arrived at Jodphur airport to catch a flight to Delhi - 8am. On arrival we learned that the flight had been cancelled from wherever it was commencing from and we were told that we would have to wait at the airport until another flight was announced because if we were not there we would not get on it. So wait we did. There was another fellow there, a German who was in the same predicament, waiting on a flight to meet some friends in Goa. As we were sitting there, lamenting the loss of valuable time, we noticed all the airport staff filing out of the airport. Seems that as they were not expecting any more flights for a while they were all going home. So in an empty airport we sat. Listening to the phones constantly ringing and wondering if, they carried news of our flights....
Eventually, about 6pm the staff came back and we were, with much efficiency, advised of our new flights and given a very thorough body search and despatched to wait for boarding. The German fellow bid us farewell and trundled off to board his flight. We watched as his plane taxied up the run way and watched as a great flash of flame flew out of one of the engines with a boom and watched as it was towed from the runway. We then boarded our flight, not, as you can imagine, too excited by this stage. But all seemed well. The plane taxied and gained momentum when the flight attendant leapt from her seat and ran to the front of the plane calling for help . . . seems she had forgotten to shut the door!! Anyway off we went, barrelling along now when all of a sudden we came to a screeching halt and another plane landed literally, (no exaggeration), feet in front of us. Thought it best at this point to shut my eyes and think myself elsewhere. Happily though the rest of the flight passed without incident and we landed safely in Delhi. Our German friend, though, was last seen marching along the Jodphur runway back to the terminal with his fellow passengers to await another flight to Goa. . . .

Daneille, upon reading your story I had a mad impulse to ring my travel agent and see if we could trade our air tickets to India for a trip on the ferry from Sydney to Tasmania. I managed to suppress the urge, but I'm not game to read your account a second time.

The "joke" is that, as well as all this train travel I am asking about, we have bought a Jet Airways pass for a host of internal flights in India. That's ten take-offs and ten landings. I consider our chances of catching a twelve-hour-late plane which belches fire from one engine while the air hostess struggles to close the back door to be running at the moment about eighty-twenty.

It's just about time for another one of those "Airport" movies -- "Airport 2004" -- so what are you doing here in Australia? Get yourself over to Hollywood fast and pick up a job as a screenwriter-cum-technical-assistant on any disaster movie that's in production!

And then there was the one about the security at Delhi International . . .

Ah Alan, I'm sure things have improved since then. But it gives me a great story to tell!

Tell away, tell away! It makes for fascinating, if disquieting reading, and, if nothing else, it will stop this thread from sinking to the bottom of the pile!

So, about the security at Delhi aiport... what, did they ask anyone carrying bombs to please turn them off before boarding?

Just a quickie - more re yr previous post. But if you are thinking about going anywhere near Abu Rd then it would be criminal not to take the bus up to Mt Abu - Indian honeymoon location so a bit tacky but nice enuf place - and just a little way out of town are the fabulous Jain temples.

Now, India is full of temples, but these are special. IMHO architecturally best of all.
Just a personal opinion.

Daneille, that was an amusing story. What year are you talking about here?

Civil aviation in India has improved tremendously in the past 5 years, especially with the advent and rise of Jet Airways and Sahara Airways. Take it from me - Jet Airways is world-class. No domestic experience in America comes even close to the Jet Airways product.

I'd be delighted to tell you the story.

It must be said, that my experiences in India were as a 23 year old backpacker back in 1990. We had not planned a thing other than our return airfares from Melbourne preferring just to travel where the wind took us (as you do), so we had to take good experiences with the bad.

We arrived back in Delhi after our horrendous experiences from Jodphur and were coaxed by a tote to stay at some hotel owned by a friend of a friend's brother-in-law's cousin's uncle or something which he swore to us was very near the airport. As it was by now late at night and we had no hope of getting into the YMCA or any other reputable backpacker accom. we decided to chance it. We arrived at this "hotel" which was, as it turned out, in the middle of nowhere. We had strange knockings on our door all through the night, strange spots of blood on the bathroom floor and on the sheets and the wardrobe in the other room kept opening and closing all night (thankfully it was only in the morning that we discovered that you could climb through our wardrobe into the room next door). We slept fitfully in our sleeping bags that night and did not see one other soul in the entire hotel other than a desk clerk who disappeared never to be seen again after we checked in. We had chosen to pay for our accommodation when we arrived as we wanted to leave early the next morning to catch a flight to Kathmandu and didn't want to muck around with 14 different forms in order to check out. Which was lucky, because despite calling out and ringing the desk bell etc, we could not raise anybody the following morning and merely left our key on the desk and treked out looking for a taxi. It turned out we were in some residential area, still to this day no idea where. We walked for what seemed like miles before we finally flagged down a stray taxi. He shook his head when we said that we wanted to go to the airport and it was supposed to be not far. Turns out we were more or less on the other side of the city to the airport, we'd really been given a bum steer.

Finally we got to the airport and to say that we were a little stressed by this stage a mild understatement. We had been told by the Thai Airways office that we could buy tickets to Kathmandu at the airport and did not have to go to the city office to purchase them. However, it was Sunday, and the external Airport office was closed on a Sunday, the only other Thai Airways office at the airport was inside the airport, that was open, but you could not go into the airport without a ticket.

We spoke to some security guards and explained our predicament. They shook their heads and signalled with their very large guns that we be on our way. We asked again, we were becoming agitated and so were they. I explained that as we were tourists we were not very clear on the rules but if they could very kindly just let us purchase our tickets we would be very grateful. The head security guard took umbrage at this, pointed his gun straight at me and asked my then fiance why an unmarried woman was travelling with him without a chaperone and why he did not make me shut up. My fiance signalled for me to do just that. There was no other choice now but to offer them money. It ended up costing us the equivalent of $50 US to get inside that airport and then they would only let my fiance in and I had to stay outside with this group of security guards while they asked me questions about my morality and what kind of girls travelled unchaperoned with men they weren't married to.

It was a great relief when my fiance came back after what seemed like an eternity and we were finally able to go inside the airport with valid tickets.

Alan, my travels through India were wonderful, and all my experiences unforgettable. Bureaucracy and red tape aside the country is beautiful and I have never experienced travel as amazing since. New Years Eve in Delhi, a camel trek through the Rajasthan Desert, Jaisalmer and the Taj Mahal at dawn are all things that make India amazing. I loved it, I hope you do.

India? Who's going to India? For myself, I'm taking the ferry from Sydney to Hobart!

Daneille,

Looks like you went looking for trouble and found it! I mean, any basic "Do's and Don'ts in India" manual will tell you not to deal with touts who hang around airports.

For an Indian trip, it pays to do your research beforehand especially if you are in a budget/backpacker mode or else you are likely to come to grief.

That said, I should like to point out that urban India has undergone a significant overhaul in the past 6-8 years. Transport options, acceptable accomodations, amenities and comforts have multiplied. And with the strong dollar rate vis-a-vis the rupee, you can get a mighty good bang for your buck. Nevertheless there's no escaping your pre-travel homework.

Agtoau, Yes I know what you are saying, we made a mistake and paid for it. About the only one on a very, very long trip to India and Nepal, I'm proud to say, so I think we got off lightly.

As I said the experience only added to the adventure of the trip, which up until then had been very trouble free. It may have ended badly, but didn't, thank goodness. I'm not complaining - as I said it has all it has given me is a good story to tell and I just thought Alan would enjoy the tale and hopefully others will learn from it.