Life Aboard the Longest Train Ride Through India | Hacker News Reader

Life Aboard the Longest Train Ride Through India

nationalgeographic.com

141 pointsmcone30 comments

I can't resist commenting since I cannot forget this ride! I have been on the same train line (don't think it was called vivek express back then) about 20 years (I was 15) back from Coimbatore to Guwahati. Back then, the train rides were like UDP packets - best effort service :)

From what I remember:

* Train was supposed to arrive in cbe at 5pm but only arrived at 2am in the morning. There was a thriving economy in the train station all the time as people needed dinner/snacks.

* The hardest parts of the rides are through Andhra pradesh (around vijayawada) which is dry and extremely hot, not for the faint of heart.

* The temperatures feel way more than 45C inside those metal compartments. There is no facility to take a shower, so the heat and smell is quite an experience :)

* Entering Bengal is one of the best sights ever. Suddenly, everything is green and looking at the infinite green fields almost gives you a new lease of life (especially after andhra!)

* After howrah, the train switches to next level of "best effort". In many places in east india, there is only a single train track and the delays cascade. The train would just stop overnight in the middle of nowhere waiting for opposite trains to pass.

* The brahmaputra (at guwahati) almost looks like the sea/ocean. You cannot see banks on the other side, it's ultra wide. It's really not a normal river. It also flow extremely fast.

* In east india, the states keep changing every station.

* I loved sitting by the window but I got a middle seat. The first part of the trip was painful. But at bhubhaneshwar or so, an army jawan (who got the RAC window seats), gave his seat to me. I remember being so happy!

* To add to the 3 day trip, our train arrived an additional 15 hours late. When we arrived in assam, the hotel cancelled our room since we didn't appear. I do wonder how my dad managed to book a hotel in assam at all with no internet or mobile. what happened due to lack of a hotel is another story :)

Ah good memories... The train was always special to me when growing up in India. I went from Goa to Nagpur by train - more than a 24 hour trip when I was in college. The summer trips were just wicked - enduring 45C+ temperatures without air conditioning. But I rarely traveled alone (and rarely sober too) and there was always some older dude spewing wisdom about how the younger generation was "corrupted". We'd just laugh about it over cigarettes - which were not allowed in the compartment but still - you got to smoke when you got to smoke. And you got to drink when you got to drink. After living in the US for the past 17 years now I don't think I'm going to have the capacity to make journeys like that again. Kids, family and times are way to hectic. Luckily I haven't transformed into the "old dudes" who complain about the "younger generation".

One meets all sorts of people on those train rides. From boring middle class families, to mystics, and of course those older people complaining about the corrupted youth.

Good to hear that you didn't turn into one of them!

(I am not trying to nitpick or be one of the old dudes :P, just trying to share my perspective which I feel strongly about)

I am < 30 and I have travelling on trains here since as long as I can remember. Still do. Never smoked in trains and seeing two train fires from up close (in one many lives were lost) that were started by bidi/cigarettes I never ever thought of smoking on a train and to be honest I am always amazed how even well educated people, knowing fully well that their smoking very well can cause a fire and may kill people, still are inconsiderate enough to keep doing it.

Yup - agree with you now. I was 17 then... I've quit smoking over 15 yrs ago.

Apologies for the blog spam but you don't find something about Indian Railways on hn everyday :) I recently tried visualization of routes and live running status of trains in India using jupyter notebook -- [http://abhirag.in/articles/train_of_thought_1.html]. Someone here might find it useful :)

Brilliant. I love indian railways and keep wishing for frequent open data set releases. Looking at your notebooks, my interest has rekindled again.

What are your thoughts on geocoding names of stations, to obtain GPS coordinates with better accuracy? It would largely be a one time effort imo.

Thanks :) if you look at part 2 -- [http://abhirag.in/articles/train_of_thought_2.html] I already have a decent algorithm to find stations with wrong coordinates, regarding geocoding, if you zoom into the map, you will find that the stations are marked with a star so OpenStreetMaps presumably has that data already. Cleaning up the location data is definitely doable but wouldn't be easy. One main issue is the duplicate names of stations, although the station codes would be different, we still need to have a rough idea of where the station is. I did try and improve my results using the MapQuest geocoding api, but I would label that effort as "work under progress" for now :)

Beautiful. What theme are you using?

Glad you liked it :) I am not using any theme, custom built the css to my liking.

Whoever likes this sort of travel, should follow Matthieu Paley (the photographer who took those photos) on Instagram. His pictures are wonderful and the destinations he goes to are amazing.

And he clearly loves places he goes to and people he meets. At some point he was commenting on his own photographs, saying something in the vein "Just came back from Lahore. What a great hospitable place, Pakistan is such an undervalued tourist destination". Undervalued tourist destination!

Thanks. @paleyphoto on instagram, just looked him up.

Longest train ride by distance is the Avadh Assam Express - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avadh_Assam_Express

I have fond memories of traveling on it in a non-air conditioned second class sleeper.

SL had its own charm and it was good till it lasted. Last couple of years it has changed. Because of the increase in migration to cities and different states the crowd has increased manifold. Unless it's off season even 3A is too crowded for a peaceful laid-back journey. Of late I've stuck to AC coaches just for comfort and relative hygiene.

While backpacking in North East (2 yrs back) I happened to hopped on a slow overnight passenger train in FC which was felt awesome.

SL, 3A, FC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railways_coaching_stock...

Sorry to nitpick as I thought something was slightly off with your statement. The largest train is Dibrugarh-kanyakumari Vivek Express although it's a weekly train. The train you'd mentioned is longest daily train.

"Rajdhani Express" trains are good for sampling full service, long-distance rail journeys from New Delhi to different cities in India.

If you want to go overboard try Palace on Wheels. http://www.palaceonwheels.co.uk

I've been on a Rajdhani Express, a couple of times (it means Capital Express, for people who don't know, because it goes to or from the capital of India). I didn't like it much [1]. It felt too enclosed (AC with no openable windows, unlike in regular trains), and hence felt stuffy, plus you cannot look out at the scenery - hills, valleys, fields, forests, rivers, lakes, factories, cities, towns and villages (you are) passing by, etc. (and there is a lot of variety of those types of things to see in India), which is part of the charm of train journeys (in India or anywhere, I guess). Felt a bit like a high-class jail :) This was some years ago, maybe things have changed now.

[1] Only plus is that you reach your destination somewhat faster than a regular train, because the Rajdhani Expresses run faster (probably take priority over other trains at junctions, etc.) - but not good for when the journey is as important as the destination ...

If you want to go overboard try Palace on Wheels.

Hilariously, "RATED NO. 4 LUXURY TRAIN IN THE WORLD".

Really liking how some long form articles are using auto-played video in place of some pictures, flows better than a manual slideshow IMHO.

it's beautiful, but it also nearly crashed my browser, so a manual "play" button would have been nice.

My one and only experience with trains in India, was last year half way through a month long adventure. Chennai to Bangalore. I had woken up with the worst case of Delhi Belly imaginable. Five hours, laying across two seats while shaking, sweating, headache, cramping, fever, you name it. All while constantly listening to the yelling/banging of the peddlers, up and down, and up and down the aisle. Mercifully the cabin was somewhat air conditioned.

Hell.

Only five hours? Consider yourself lucky you didn't have it for 48.

Oh, I had it for four days straight. Shaking, soaking two beds, destroying the bathroom, 30 liters of water, a trip to the doctor($8 total btw). It was only a five hour train ride!

These may not be most comfortable or fastest trains, but I have fond memories of my childhood traveling in these trains:

* Jump out of the train at every station, do some stretches and get into the train when it just starts moving.

* Check the seating chart to find out who will be sitting with you, their sex, age, name etc.. :-) (don't know if they still display those charts)

* Talk to total strangers for a few hours - those were the days when there were no mobile devices to tune into (or tune out of the world)

* Sit/stand on the steps near the door - (stupid me, I now know it's dangerous)

* The excitement about sleeping in the upper berth - but that's the most uncomfortable spot without proper ventilation and very little room.

so many other little things, don't think I would enjoy all these now, but those were good old days.

Oh they still have the charts, I always check it before boarding :)

"equatorial sun"?! Last time I checked India is way up north of the equator...

Very emblematic of the oft-seen love-hate experience with India itself.

wow what a horrible place to be. I've traveled by train in China. The crowds, long hours, even getting to the train station and traveling between the car to the train platform was pretty taxing. This looks to be way worse.

I went across China in soft sleeper class and it was wonderful (particularly by comparison with the previous legs through Russia and Kazakhstan). Their modern trains are pretty fast, though going a long distance will always take a certain amount of time.

1 point by jahnu 0 minutes ago | edit | delete [-]

I found the "hard sleepers" even better. They are soft! The lights go out at night so it's quiet. I found soft sleepers usually had a lot of drunk business people having a good time so it was hard to sleep.

Either way, traveling around China, getting lost in seldom visited corners of that vast country, was an incredible experience.

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