Are you planning to visit
India and would like to
travel by train so that you can take in the sights as your train courses along through the vast country? If yes, please read this summary carefully. It will help you plan your journey and book your tickets online without the bother of having to go through an agent. And as it is online, your location on our little planet Earth doesn’t matter.
Indian Railways, a government department, has its own site http://www.indianrail.gov.in and you can use it to plan your trip. Here you can find trains linking cities, their schedules, availability of bookings aka (also known as) reservations, fares et al.
However once the plan is made, and you have to make the bookings you need to go to the website of IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd.), the subject matter of this article. Please take a careful note that you must register on the site before you can login and make the booking.
While registering please keep the following in mind. If you are not resident in India, even after selecting a country different from India, the state and city lists will remain populated with Indian states and cities and you have to necessarily enter your city and state in the “Other” box provided alongside each of these fields. It is nice to see that you can make your first
booking immediately after a successful registration and there is no need for any verification through your mailbox etc.
Though it is possible to plan your trip right here on IRCTC site, as earlier suggested, it will be much better to do the planning on the Railways site and then use this site to quickly accomplish the booking. IRCTC is a very busy site and you are likely to encounter communication failure messages now and then, hence the suggestion. For quickly accomplishing a booking on the IRCTC site, please avoid using “Plan My Travel” under Services menu, as you would have already done that on the Railways’ site. Instead choose the Quick Book option. This option presumes that you know the three letter alpha codes for the originating, boarding (if different from originating), and destination stations as also the 4 digit numeric code for your train. These are, as suggested, to be found out at the Railways’ site and noted down for use at this site.
Some important points to be borne in mind are as follows:
· It is almost always better to go for the e-ticket rather than the i-ticket. The e-ticket is what you can print out for yourself from the site. Also there are no hassles if an e-ticket is lost: Just print it out once again. Further if you wish to cancel an e-ticket you can do it online and the refund is credited back to your bank account or the credit card that you used for payment at the time of booking. As against this an i-ticket has to be delivered at your address and involves additional cost, getting a duplicate for a lost one is a nightmare and has costs too, and you must go to one of the physical counters for cancellations if you have to do so.
· For an e-ticket the first-named passenger in case of a group, or the lone passenger in case of a
ticket for one, must submit details of a photo-identity card and carry the same during travel for identification. There is no such requirement for an i-ticket.
· There are two ways to pay online for the ticket. One uses a direct debit to your account with one of the Indian banks listed on the IRCTC site. As you may not have an account with any of these, you can make payment using your international credit card. For this you have to use one of the gateways provided on the site.
· If you are traveling in the First Class AC compartment, no issues here. This class is available only on some selected trains. However if you are traveling in the Second or Third class AC compartment (If you have the remotest though of traveling in non-AC compartment, just banish the thought) and are alone or in a pair, here are a few additional tips:
o For a single person traveling in AC 3, the side lower may be a good choice unless (s)he is too tall. Similarly a combination of
side lower and
side upper will be good for a couple.
o If traveling in AC 2, avoid side berths (both upper and lower) as the berths in cabins are better value for money and cost the same as the side ones.
· Finally if you are above 60 but not an Indian national, it will be advisable to forgo the senior citizen concession when prompted for a confirmation as the availability of this concession for foreigners is not certain.
Bon Voyage J
More reviews about the http://www.irctc.co.in