May 16, 2009
It’s often said that the greatest legacy left by the British in India is the Indian Railway. An expansive behemoth, the railway crisscrosses across the country, and, with 1.6 million employees, serves as the world’s second largest employer behind China's Army of 2.3 million. While India's various airlines can get you across long distances within the country for around $120, the train is drastically cheaper, the preferred method of travel for backpackers, and a part of the Indian experience in and of itself. With 1.1 billion citizens, one can safely assume that, at any given time, a whole lot of people want to get from one destination to another. Add the nation’s diversity and financial contrasts to that equation and you get a massive permutation of quotas, classes, waiting lists, cancellation requirements, and options for getting from point A to point B. After some time exploring the IRCTC website, it became apparent I was going to have to get over a bit of a learning curve.
That led me to IndiaMike’s expansive coverage on the topic, a whole lot of time spent at an Internet Cafe, and the scary realization that every train heading north out of India’s blistering summer south had been booked up months in advance with waiting lists in the triple digits. Hope was not lost however, as no country wants to go around stranding tourists in a foreign land, and, as such, the question of Foreign Tourist Quota availability was still open. For whatever reason, probably because they need to see your passport and tourist visa, Foreign Tourist Quota tickets cannot be purchased online, only in person, and only at certain main train stations. There seemed to be a mass exodus of backpackers heading north out of Goa towards the Himalayan hill stations of Himachal Pradesh, so I signed offline with the intention of finding one such traveler who could offer some advice.
While still fighting a mild heat-stroke-induced fever, I followed the sound of live music to a local restaurant where a jam band was performing. I bumped into a friend there who was heading to Himachal Pradesh in a few days. She had been able to get a foreign tourist ticket to Delhi from Pernem, a train station about 45 minutes away by motor scooter. From there she’d take a bus to Manali, Dharamsala, Shimla, or any of the other hot spots in Himachal. Sounded like a plan. I began to pay my bill and go home to get some rest when I met Leanne.
A teacher from California, Leanne had taken a 2 year sabbatical from her inner city post in the LBC to travel the world. She was 8 months in and had an incredible set of destinations already under her belt. Her plans were to head from Goa to Darjeeling in the northeast state of West Bengal. This was going to involve a flight to Calcutta, a 10 hour train to NJP, and a 3 hour jeep up the mountainside to Darjeeling. She began showing me pictures of the gorgeous town known for its world famous tea.
“And best of all, the temperature is in the 60s. The 60s!!” This was a good point. But Himachal Pradesh would have similar weather and seemed to be the place to be in May. “That may be, but the monsoon hits Darjeeling in two to three weeks. It’s totally underwater afterwards while the rains don’t hit Himachal until July.”
I said I’d sleep on it, and the next morning was on board. There was still the matter of getting the train tickets from Calcutta to NJP, so that afternoon we rented a scooter for about $3 USD a day and set out for Pernem.
“No,” the man in the booth said.
“What do you mean 'no'? No, there aren't tourist quota tickets left? No, you can’t sell them? Or no, you don’t understand?”
“No.”
“A friend bought a tourist quota ticket here just yesterday to Delhi.”
“Yes, a ticket from PERNEM, not Calcutta,” he replied, and before I could say anything else another man pushed in front of us and started talking to the man in the booth in Hindi, who completely ignored our attempts to express that, no, we weren’t finished. We were eventually referred to Thivim, the next train station down the line in Goa. Back in the blistering heat, on the scooter, and another 45 minutes later we were in Thivim with more bad news.
They had no access to sell foreign tourist quota tickets from this station. This ticket man was far nicer, actually turning the computer screen around to show us as he selected Calcutta as the source station, NJP as the destination, and foreign tourist as the quota. “YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO PERFORM THIS OPERATION,” blinked the terminal coldly in black on white text. Crap.
Leanne then went to talk to the station manager to see if she could get some sympathy points for being a poor, stranded, foreign woman, traveling by herself. Her description of the station manager’s office coincided with one I would eventually have weeks later in Varanasi. One man (or two in the case of Varanasi) sat behind a desk covered in telephones, all ringing at once, while speaking into two handsets at a time, as various other men ran in and out with papers and requests. It was like walking into a 1950s newspaper room during a breaking political scandal. All this for a small train station in rural Goa, so one could only imagine what the state of Calcutta’s station manager’s office was like. Needless to say, Leanne did not manage to get us tickets.
At this point I enlisted the help of a trusted travel agent, who looked into it, found out that tourist quota tickets were still available, and that the train station in Vasco De Gama was our best bet. Vasco De Gama was 2.5 hours from Arambol, and it was already getting dark, so we headed back for the night, sore, sunburned, but still determined. We set out again the next day, this time with an overnight bag packed, as I really didn’t feel like driving 2.5 hours and back in one day just for train tickets. This was a good call because by the time we got to Vasco De Gama the station was closed for a half day…go figure. We found a reasonable guest house to stay in on the nearby beach of Bogmalo, a popular Indian tourist (and thus considerably more expensive) spot.
The next morning, after an hour of waiting in line, filling out forms, and waiting in line again, we had our tickets. As I stood there, staring at the ticket that had taken so many hours and miles to obtain, I realized that, though it was priced at 630 rupee ($12.60), this piece of paper in my hand was priceless. I carefully folded it into my wallet, got back on the scooter, and spent the rest of the day sightseeing our way across the Portuguese colony back towards Arambol.
“No,” the man in the booth said.
“What do you mean 'no'? No, there aren't tourist quota tickets left? No, you can’t sell them? Or no, you don’t understand?”
“No.”
“A friend bought a tourist quota ticket here just yesterday to Delhi.”
“Yes, a ticket from PERNEM, not Calcutta,” he replied, and before I could say anything else another man pushed in front of us and started talking to the man in the booth in Hindi, who completely ignored our attempts to express that, no, we weren’t finished. We were eventually referred to Thivim, the next train station down the line in Goa. Back in the blistering heat, on the scooter, and another 45 minutes later we were in Thivim with more bad news.
They had no access to sell foreign tourist quota tickets from this station. This ticket man was far nicer, actually turning the computer screen around to show us as he selected Calcutta as the source station, NJP as the destination, and foreign tourist as the quota. “YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO PERFORM THIS OPERATION,” blinked the terminal coldly in black on white text. Crap.
Leanne then went to talk to the station manager to see if she could get some sympathy points for being a poor, stranded, foreign woman, traveling by herself. Her description of the station manager’s office coincided with one I would eventually have weeks later in Varanasi. One man (or two in the case of Varanasi) sat behind a desk covered in telephones, all ringing at once, while speaking into two handsets at a time, as various other men ran in and out with papers and requests. It was like walking into a 1950s newspaper room during a breaking political scandal. All this for a small train station in rural Goa, so one could only imagine what the state of Calcutta’s station manager’s office was like. Needless to say, Leanne did not manage to get us tickets.
At this point I enlisted the help of a trusted travel agent, who looked into it, found out that tourist quota tickets were still available, and that the train station in Vasco De Gama was our best bet. Vasco De Gama was 2.5 hours from Arambol, and it was already getting dark, so we headed back for the night, sore, sunburned, but still determined. We set out again the next day, this time with an overnight bag packed, as I really didn’t feel like driving 2.5 hours and back in one day just for train tickets. This was a good call because by the time we got to Vasco De Gama the station was closed for a half day…go figure. We found a reasonable guest house to stay in on the nearby beach of Bogmalo, a popular Indian tourist (and thus considerably more expensive) spot.
The next morning, after an hour of waiting in line, filling out forms, and waiting in line again, we had our tickets. As I stood there, staring at the ticket that had taken so many hours and miles to obtain, I realized that, though it was priced at 630 rupee ($12.60), this piece of paper in my hand was priceless. I carefully folded it into my wallet, got back on the scooter, and spent the rest of the day sightseeing our way across the Portuguese colony back towards Arambol.
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