Travel Photography | Train Travel In India

We have decided that we must get out from New Delhi the very next day or we will be stuck here in New Delhi, so our first agenda on the next day 11th June is to get a train ticket. Before we leave our hotel, according to our hotel receptionist, New Delhi Railway Station is just a walking distance away, along Main Bazaar Pahar Ganj, so we just move ahead.

Main Bazaar area is really like a war zone or like there were massive earth quake shaking this area the night before but the truth to be told is that, this area is under massive renovation or upgrade work due to Commonwealth 2010 where India will be hosting the games. Th smell is really unbearable but we must bear with it, this area is main Bazaar where a lot of backpackers stay here, it is not difficult to get a hotel here especially budget hotel, walk few steps and you will find a hotel left and right.

After walking about ten minutes we finally reach in front of New Delhi Railway Station, actually we can get here within five minutes walking but, we are busy taking pictures along the way. There is nothing beautiful here but we just want to document our presence here and who knows if we have a chance to come back here agin, everything will look different.

Once we get in front of New Delhi Railway Station, we get get confuse for a moment, we don’t know where to go, where is the counter, we did make our homework and according to our trusted Lonely Planet book we should go directly to International Tourist Travel Bureau office on the second floor of the building but we don’t know where to begin, we have no idea where is the office are.

To make things worst we were approached by this young good looking man and asked what we are looking for, and I said we were looking for train ticket and tell that man or maybe I should call him “tout” that we were looking for International Tourist Travel Bureau Office to get our ticket and suddenly the tout wants to “helps”, he tells us that the Tourist Office are closed due to some kind of renovation and the office have move to the other side across the road, we refuse to follow that man because we wanted to see with our our own eyes first whether it is closed and the “tout” insist to take us to somewhere else and we decided to ignore him.

We have done our homework and according to Lonely Planet book, they warned us not to trust to anybody  that tells us that the Travel Bureau is closed, is moving somewhere or it was burnt down or under renovation, we head over to the left side of the building where we saw many people coming out from the train station and look for the first floor and and finally we find the office at the first floor of the building, and there were a big signboard on the wall that warned the foreign tourist not to trust to anyone that say the International Tourist Bureau is closed or shift somewhere.

On the the first floor inside the tourist office bureau, there were not many “Foreign” looking face there, I see mainly Indian looking face, maybe they are not Indian native, maybe they are Pakistani or Bangladeshi or maybe India people from other country. There were a lot of open counter there and we have to fills out some form in order to book our tickets. Our original plan is to go to Jodhpur today if possible and if we don’t get the ticket due to no more seats  then we have to make another plan and that’s why we need to settle this thing early in the morning so we have a lot of times to rearrange our itinerary if we don’t get the tickets. Actually our hope getting the tickets is 50/50 because from what we have read online, the train ticket are open for booking as early as sixty days before departure, so it look like almost impossible to get the ticket if we wanted to travel the same day, but we have to try.

To cut the story short, we did get our tickets and one of the reason why we go here at the International Tourist Bureau is because they have a quota train tickets for tourist, if we buy the ticket from the normal counter at the ground floor, where everybody get their ticket, for sure we don’t have a chance and thank God there is still available tickets for  for five of us.

We buy a ticket to Jodhpur and also buy another ticket from Jodhpur to Jaipur, the train Journey from New Delhi to Jodhpur is about twelve hours and the train will depart at 8:330PM and we have to get our train from Old Delhi Train Station and not from here at New Delhi Train Station where we bought our ticket, Old Delhi Train Station is about half an hour from here. Estimate time of our arrival at Jodhpur Train Station is 8:30AM next morning 12th  June 2010.

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