Indians claim to have the biggest booking system in the world for their railway network ! Thousands, if not millions of people travel by train every day in India, this obviously result in trains being booked way earlier than you would ever think (even months) !!!! Therefore if you’re looking to book a train, this may result slightly more challenging than the easy peasy step-by-step process if you were in Europe or America.
In order to book an indian train from home, there are a few relatively easy steps that you should follow. At the moment I found two different ways of booking these trains.
1. BOOK THROUGH THE INDIAN RAILWAYS WEBSITE
The official website of the Indian Railways (irctc.co.in) its a bit user unfriendly to people living outside India. In order to book any trains from their website, you will have to create an account with them; problem is that once you’ve created the account then you’ll have to verify it. In order to verify the account though, you will have to provide your email and an indian telephone number. Now, what if you, as many others tourists, don’t have an indian phone number ? There’s a solution !!!
When they will ask you for the phone number during the account creation, just put your own phone number including the country code as well and leave that for later. Then send a scan of your passport page to the customer care email (care@irctc.co.in) including your IRCT username, saying that you don’t have an indian telephone number (cause you’re a tourist) and would like to have the account activated. After sometime you will receive an email saying that you’re account has been verified and then you’re ready to go !
Once you’re account is ready you will be able to start booking your train journeys. Keep in mind that the whole system is VERY VERY SLOW and therefore you need to arm yourself with patience. If at some point during the booking anything doesn’t work, try again, try again and try again until you have your reservation !
2. BOOK THROUGH CLEARMYTRIP.COM
This private company is directly connected to the IRCTC system therefore booking through them will be the same as booking through the Indian Railways website. Though, bads and goods come from this similarity.
The good news is that I found the website clearmytrip.com to be more user friendly than the irctc; everything from Dates to Times and train Classes, seems easier to understand.
The bad news is that in order to finish the booking you will have to fill in with your IRCTC username and password… so yeah, back to the hassle of creating an account with them.
In order to book a train through clearmytrip you will also need to registrate for an account on that website but this is super easy to do as it will only require you to validate the account through email.
Before leaving for India with Marta, I booked all the available trains on the clearmytrip website and it was well worth the small additional booking fee of 40INR !
WHEN TO BOOK …?
As I said earlier, thousands of people travel on indian trains every day and as a consequence, trains get fully booked much in advance than you’ll ever think. Especially those few overnight trains that cover long-distances from city to city ! Me and Marta found ourselves having to take an overnight bus from Agra to Varanasi as the train was already booked 1 month before the actual date.
Many people said to be you can also book trains there as you can ask for the Foreign Tourist quota (FT), a number of tickets reserved to tourist which can only be bought while in India. Although if you’re not a fan of cueing I would suggest you book trains before you go as this will save you a lot of time-consuming hassle !
As the old rule goes, the EARLIER, the BETTER !
P.s. (Once in India, if someone tries to say you that the train you’re taking is broken/not leaving/not existent, you need to buy another tickets and bla bla bla… those are just excuses, don’t believe these guys even if they look professional ! Go straight for the ticket office and ask there, its a safer bet !)
If you need any other info about indian trains check this website out (seat61.com), it helped us a lot during our planning !
PLANNING A TRIP TO INDIA? CHECK MORE GUIDES BELOW!
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