Long‑distance train travel in India has a certain exoticism to it—the idea of drifting across states, watching the country unfold.

They're certainly memorable and beat flying by a long way, but the realities of travelling in India can stamp on the dream, so it’s wise to arrive prepared.

And even the best‑laid plans are never far from unravelling when travelling around the subcontinent.

My trip from Delhi to the Siliguri corridor aboard the Brahmaputra Mail proved that point the moment I arrived at Old Delhi Junction, ready to catch out.

Crowds are large. Keep your valuables safe

The lights of a stationary train illuminate the dense smog layers.

It’s above us, on a low bridge arching over the road.

In the luminescent glow of a carriage doorway, a passenger lounges, smoking a cigarette and surveying the scene of his arrival or departure with languid puffs.

Beyond the bridge is our destination: Old Delhi Junction.

Our taxi driver tells us he isn’t allowed to drive any further.

Even if he were allowed, he wouldn’t be able to penetrate the packed lot of cars, buses and Tuk Tuks, all competing for that rare Indian commodity—space.

The approach to the station is an exodus.

Barely a few hundred metres away, the station facade is blotted out by pollution.

Along with the rest of the crowd, we trudge through the twisting forecourt, taking care not to drag our bags through anything impermissible.

Arrive early because help is hard to get

My friends Finn and Cameron and I have just finished attending a Hindu wedding (our reason for being in India) and are now heading to catch the Brahmaputra Mail.

All being well, this train will carry us through five states and drop us at New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, where we’ll catch the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway up to the hill town of the same name.

The Brahmaputra Mail connects Delhi with far‑away Assam and has been involved in several fatal rail disasters, including the awful Gaisal collision that killed nearly 300 people.

Statistically speaking, rail travel in India is dramatically safer than road travel, so we push our grim research to the backs of our minds as we trudge to the station.

We’re disoriented when we arrive at Old Delhi Junction via its rear entrance because the station façade doesn’t match the online photos we’ve seen, which were of the front of the building.

The current of bodies sweeping us along is too strong to fight, so there’s little to do but surrender to it and figure out later where we need to go.

Eventually, we’re dumped ashore in the grimy but spacious concourse.

There are several help desks, but the queue for each is prohibitively long.

Fortunately, our train is the last one listed on the departures board, on time and scheduled to depart from Platform 14 at 11:40pm.

Bless any traveller who needs to ask for help or book their tickets in person at the station.

I’m glad we booked our tickets in advance.

Keep your luggage in sight

To reach the platforms, we have to pass through security—or “no security,” as it might more accurately be called.

Our bags must go through an unmanned CT scanner.

There are no staff or guards in sight.

Somewhere, a single security guard is probably enboothed in a far‑off office, X‑rays on one screen and cricket flickering on the other.

Everyone charges the scanner with such ferocity that I half expect it to be picked up and crowd‑surfed away.

And yes, for the thousands of passengers arriving at the station, there is only one.

I shudder to think how many bags have been stolen owing to how laissez‑faire this unsecured not‑system is. (I've witnessed a bag robbery in Agra Fort Railway Station.)

Being reunited with your belongings on the far side seems to boil down to luck and how well you defend them.

When I dash around to retrieve my bags, my arms are parried away by desperate passengers who assume I’m trying to steal theirs.

When we’re finally through, we strap our luggage tightly to our bodies and head for one of the paid lounges to kill time before departure.

Use mosquito spray—even in the big cities

I’d shrugged off Cameron’s warnings about potential health hazards here.

His online research earlier in the day suggested that mosquitoes might be a problem.

“There can’t be any bloody mosquitoes at a railway station,” I’d naively protested.

How wrong I was.

The raised gantry connecting the platforms passes over bright green swamps, gloopy with foul things and no doubt colon‑rich with coliform bacteria.

Down the stairs at the other end of the station, we emerge onto a vaulted concourse built in the neo‑Mughal style.

The walls are made from red Agra sandstone and inlaid with intricate white patterns.

It’s far more attractive than New Delhi Station, which is squat, flat, and made of mismatched panels like a flea market—and which, a week after we returned home, was the scene of a deadly crowd crush that killed 18 people.

For all its functional ugliness, New Delhi Station has, like the rest of New Delhi, overtaken regal Old Delhi, and this once‑splendid station now looks shabby and unloved.

Use the paid lounges, but don't expect logic

The paid lounges are incredibly cheap.

The one we choose costs 10 rupees per person per hour; a very modest fee, but still an unaffordable luxury for many Indians.

Although there’s nothing special about these lounges, touting is expressly forbidden inside.

Outside, the platforms teem with passengers sleeping in piles of rags, stray dogs, and battle‑worn locomotives idling, looking like warrior‑heroes.

But inside the lounge, away from the constant nagging for this and that, the mood is calm.

They offer a far more relaxing wait than anywhere else.

But they are comically overstaffed.

On entry, you pay for your notional wait and are given a small slip as proof.

Another person, who watches as the slip is handed to you, checks to ensure it’s not counterfeit.

A third person sits by the toilet and collects a small fee for its use.

A fourth person sells snacks, and there’s usually a cleaner or two moving dirt about with their brooms.

Buy food on the platforms. It's simple

To buy snacks inside the lounge, you tell the snack wallah what you’d like, and they tell you to pay the corresponding amount to the person who gave you the entry slip.

This person takes your money, checks your entry slip, and prints another slip with your order on it.

You then hand this slip to the snack wallah.

Goods in hand, you show them and your order slip to the slip‑checker, who ensures your goods were indeed purchased inside the lounge and correspond to the order slip before letting you sit down.

I tested this complicated system and didn’t get what I ordered.

Apart from a few cooked foods that are probably off‑limits to foreigners anyway, the food on offer in the lounge is exactly the same crisps, pop, and packs of Bombay mix sold on the platforms and all over India.

Long‑distance train travel in India

At 11pm, we head to catch our train.

We need more food to survive the journey, so we buy snacks from one of the vendors on the platform.

His teeth are stained red with betel, and he has a suspicious face.

He’s keen to know what we’ve been up to in India, so we show him our henna tattoos that read “friend of the groom” in Hindi.

When he sees them, he cranks up the bhangra music on his radio and twirls our change ritualistically around our heads.

On cue and without exchanging a word, we all break into the fiery dance moves we learned at the wedding—screwing in lightbulbs with loose waists.

Know your coach codes. H1 ≠ AC1

We've roughed it in India so far.

As a treat for our struggles and hassles, and because this is our longest train journey (Friday night through Sunday morning), we’ve booked ourselves in AC1 class, or “top class.”

The Man in Seat 61's compressive index of facts about Indian Railways was the only resource we needed when planning our trip and choosing which class to pick.

Not many trains haul first class coaches, usually topping out at AC2, and we’re excited by the prospect of relative privacy in a lockable cabin.

Card games, some wine, rolling scenery—what’s not to like?

Our coach is far toward the rear of the train, well away from the locomotive.

In fact, we walk practically all the way to the caboose.

Coaches on Indian Railways are usually labelled according to their class: an S3 ticket means you’re travelling in coach S3, and so on.

Confusingly, the AC1 coach is labelled “H1.”

We’re not aware of this, however, and poke our heads into the AC1 coach.

It’s an open‑plan, hostel‑style coach.

No lockable cabin. No privacy. No wine or card games.

So far from what we expected, in fact, that we let out a little nervous laughter.

Lower classes are manageable on shorter journeys, but they’re hot, busy, noisy, and the bunks in sleeper class are little planks.

The beds are stacked three‑high, and the top‑most ones have no windows—most disagreeable on any train journey that stretches over two days.

Be assertive. It pays off

We step into the H1 coach and notice that the berths are the “private” cabins we booked back in the UK.

When we show our ticket to the steward, he points back to the AC1 coach, which is teeming with prone bodies sprawled out, comfortably installed for the night.

I protest and try to communicate that our ticket is for an H1 class berth, but he just walks away, grinning and leaving us to our fate.

Travelling across India puts you firmly on the back foot, constantly trying to bridge a wide language gap while avoiding clever scams.

When advising Michael Palin for his Around the World in 80 Days adventure, the journalist Alan Whicker said he becomes “tremendously British” when things start to fall apart, and doesn’t bother trying to speak the local language because speaking it badly is a strategic disadvantage.

Not wanting to let my friends down, I channel Alan now and say “no, no, no, no, no,” while vigorously shaking my head and standing in his way.

We let our bags block the narrow corridor, and this is all it takes to summon a more competent steward.

He has access to some clandestine app that the other steward doesn’t (or can’t be bothered to look at), and into it he punches our PNR numbers.

Just like that, we’re shown to compartment C in the H1 coach.

(A PNR is your Passenger Name Record—a ten‑digit booking reference that’s essential for checking your reservation. Keep it written down or printed; it’s often more useful than the ticket itself.)

We’re a little surprised when the compartment door slides back to reveal a man already bunked up, trying to sleep.

For a moment, we wonder whether we were nearly bribed out of our cabin, but conclude that “private compartment” probably means different things depending on which train you travel on.

Expect late departures and use them to sleep

The steward who nearly demoted our trip—and our dreams—makes our beds for us.

I accept this act of contrition but withhold baksheesh (a tip or bribe).

Our unexpected cabin guest works in Texas and is visiting family in India.

I’d never thought about it before, but many well‑off Indians who live abroad must travel like this when they return to visit, and for that they have my renewed respect.

“Yeah. This is not first class,” he says as we’re settling in.

No sh*t.

The cabin is basically a cross between the Hogwarts Express and a gulag.

The coach is as grimy as all the others we’ve travelled on, but the pleather beds are blue and we have a door and some thin walls.

But it will do just fine.

A well‑dressed conductor slides his head into our compartment and advises us to “keep door locked.”

We do as he says.

On India's sleeper trains, boarding is usually bedtime, so we round off the day with some wine left over from the wedding.

Beyond the window, enveloped in a milky sodium glow, heaps of broken concrete and twisted steel creep by.

Then a lonely platform. Then the ruined backs of slums and trash caught on barbed wire.

Delhi’s run-down neighbourhoods are a wearisome sight, but our very motion carries us past them, and by morning, we will be hundreds of kilometres away.

Get used to interruptions

Rat‑a‑tat‑tat.

8am sharp, Saturday morning.

I ignore it, hoping the person knocking on the door will go away.

Bang bang bang!

The sort of knock that makes you feel guilty of a crime you haven’t committed.

Finn throws back his covers and unlocks the door to see what all the fuss is about.

A sweep cleaner bimbles in, alert to naught but the particles of dirt he urgently wants to waft his broom over.

A cursory wave of his brush achieves nothing.

And did we not leave Old Delhi towards midnight? What have we done since then but sleep—and what could we possibly have done to be ankle‑deep in crap come the morning?

Beats me.

Just as the “first class” designation of this compartment beats me.

This early‑morning intrusion is the only concession to luxury we notice during the entire trip.

Our Indo‑Texan companion sleeps soundly through the fuss.

Enjoy having your personal space back

Owing to previous life choices, Cameron has gallstones that occasionally make themselves painfully felt.

Today, they decide to play up.

And his jet lag is back.

As a result, he passes the entire day in a sort of hypnagogic state.

Information and stimuli reach him only after a heavy delay, and his capacity to make lucid responses is greatly diminished.

Finn whiles the time away reading on his phone and doing some work on his laptop.

Both of them have contrived leaves of absence from work to come to India.

What a pleasure it is in such a hectic life, where the enjoyment of one’s choices is so frequently and perniciously eroded by all the other possible diversions, all shouting and proclaiming to be better, to have absolutely nothing to do.

We’re in a metal box, eight feet wide and ten feet deep.

Our choices are basically between reading, sleeping, eating, or drinking—a simple and agreeable proposition after more than a week hustling around India.

In a beautiful way, days inside a railway compartment are devoid of recognisable structure or individual feeling. Monday blues and Sweet Thursdays exist only outside the box.

Choose a loo to suit you

To break up the day, I try out the loos.

There’s a regular Western‑style loo and a squat‑style one on opposite sides of the carriage. Aiming proves equally difficult in both, owing to the movement of the train.

Sometime during the night, a couple with young children and a baby came aboard.

They don’t have a cabin, and they make do sitting on blankets on the floor in the vestibule area between the loos.

I’m glad the conductor hasn’t moved them on, as even their small allotment of dirty floor is better suited to private travel than the seedy lower‑class carriages.

There’s a lot of slack in the couplings and, whenever the train begins to accelerate or decelerate, the carriages lurch violently in an accordion motion.

On one trip to the loo, this sudden movement catches me out and sends me flying across the carriage towards the family, but I manage to grab onto something before I crush their children.

We all see the funny side of it.

Get used to trash, India's third rail

Indo‑Texas sleeps through the massive bangs and jerks without so much as a start.

With so little to do, and exhausted by our travel, Finn, Cameron and I put our earplugs back in and lie in our bunks, chatting idly.

Earplugs are essential on Indian trains as the bangs, jerks, and corridor traffic don’t keep to any schedule.

The scene outside the window is impressively unchanging—as flat as a snooker table and just as green.

The same stubbly crop stretches out beside us, all the way to the vanishing point.

The same swampy run‑off thick with algal blooms and the same trash are also depressingly permanent.

India’s trash problem is extremely disheartening.

An unbroken verge of trash runs continuously next to the line like a third rail.

Beamed in from another planet, one might think the trash line serves some function integral to the operation of the railway, or that we experience collective separation anxiety from it if we ever stray too far away.

People throw trash out of the doors (which are not locked and can be opened at any time) whenever it suits them, and this behaviour is infuriatingly normalized.

Some Indian Railways staff also dump collected rubbish onto the lines, which goes a long way to explaining why so much garbage has accumulated into these giant levees.

Doubtless, this is not an Indian Railways policy, but the reasons for this saddening practice are simple enough to imagine:

• Normalization
• Complacency
• Lack of basic education
• Pressure to avoid the costs associated with municipal waste collections (hardly guaranteed to be well managed themselves)

As a visitor, I wouldn’t dream of throwing trash from the train.

But if I was born in India and grew up in constant sight of hundreds of kilometres of refuse, it would be sanctimonious to pretend that littering would outrage me and that I would put all my waste properly in the bin.

Help your fellow passengers

Every forty minutes or so, we clank into a station and the padlock wallahs and chai wallahs climb aboard to sell their wares.

People walk along the tracks on the non‑platform side, either looking for their carriage or just idling about.

They pass very close by our window, but we’re never directly disturbed.

Most of the stations are wide, low‑slung, and crumbling under the winter sun.

When we pull off, we jolt in fits and starts.

The train blasts its horn, but it’s so far away that it’s only a soft echo.

This is a relief, as these horns are teeth‑shatteringly loud (another reason to pack those earplugs).

Even in a country as large as India, we roll over the occasional level crossing—mopeds, Tuk Tuks, and pedestrians backed up down dusty, wonky lanes.

We also stop at some of India’s larger railway junctions, one of which is Patna.

During our brief conversation with him the night before, Indo‑Texas said this is where he was getting off.

We pull into Patna around 2pm, and Cameron, in a wakeful moment, nudges him awake and informs him of our arrival.

He packs at record speed, and we help him by clearing our stuff and passing him this and that.

Then he slides into his trainers, thanks us for waking him, and departs, leaving us with the cabin to ourselves.

We’ve been snoozing all day and only now bother to reconfigure the cabin into its daytime arrangement.

We leave Indo‑Texas’s top bunk in place and use it as a parcel shelf for the gear we unpack, and so begins our brief day.

Economise speech and entertainment

On a long and tiring journey such as ours with lots of enforced togetherness, it’s best to economise speech and rely instead on a sort of telepathy that can evolve between good travel companions.

Finn, Cameron, and I have all seen the same sights, experienced the same frustrations, and waited the same waits.

Attach too many words to these shared experiences and you quickly become a repetitive bore.

Into this void, it’s wise to cultivate monk‑like patience and an unconditional understanding of your companions’ plights because, at some point, you will annoy one another.

To have a good time, this annoyance needs to pass without doing permanent damage.

Sequestered as we are, and with very little to offer in the way of original analysis, our conversation slows naturally—like the dilation of time on powerful drugs.

As the afternoon seeps away, we average about ten words per minute.

Bring some easy reading

I try listlessly to read William Dalrymple's City of Djinns, but having only just left it, reading about Delhi is about as appealing as reading about cases of animal cruelty.

Not that it’s a bad or uninteresting book.

On the contrary, it’s thoughtful, considered, and engaging.

But even Dalrymple concedes that arriving in India only to linger in Delhi is perverse, like preferring powdered milk to the real thing or going to Darjeeling to drink Nesquik.

For the moment, I have no desire to return to Delhi in body or mind, so I write up my journal on a little rickety table and drink wine from a camping mug.

Whenever the carriages bang together, my wine goes flying, so I have to remain on high alert.

Make the most of India's sunsets

By late afternoon, we’ve travelled more than a thousand kilometres from Delhi and are several time zones to the east.

Or we would be, if India were divided into time zones. But like China to the north, it isn’t.

Consequently, we’re treated to a spectacular early sunset: peach into sienna into umber.

We pull alongside another train heading in the same direction, both of us travelling very slowly.

After running parallel for what seems like ages, the broadside of the other train retreats slowly into the distance, as if one has cast the other adrift.

After a while, we can make out the entirety of the other train—a snake of tiny cargo containers only a shade brighter than the sky.

As we take a wide arc to the north, it finally slips out of view.

At dusk, the landscape becomes notably more hilly, but the light is too low to appreciate it for long.

We’re now travelling up through the Siliguri corridor, a narrow tract of land, only fourteen miles wide at its narrowest point, that connects the Indian state of West Bengal to the seven states of northeast India, including the famous Assam region.

This tract is bounded by Nepal to the west and Bangladesh to the southeast.

Our destination, New Jalpaiguri, lies immediately due north, next to the Teesta River.

Your stop may come at 4am, so be ready

We’re due to arrive in New Jalpaiguri in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Because of this, and because none of us are interested enough in any activity to bother turning on the lights as darkness envelops our berth, we head to bed, Cameron taking up residence in Indo‑Texas’s old bunk.

After a short nap, there’s a sharp rap on the door and a new companion is ushered into our compartment.

He’s smiling and very chatty. We aren’t.

After a quick demonstration of how to work the various combinations of reading lamps, we go back to resting our eyes, alarms set for 3:30am.

Plan your exit. Don't rely on phone signal

The alarm rudely chirps us from our sleep after barely a nap, and we blearily pack our bags in the dark.

Indian Railways trains do not feature announcements to tell passengers which stop is next. Instead, you rely on prior knowledge or GPS, as we’ve been doing.

You also have to factor in any delays your train has encountered. (So set an alarm and track your progress, the stops can be very brief.)

We’re too remote now for our phones to connect, so we summon a steward from his pile of spare bedding down the carriage to tell us what the next stop is.

He looks very annoyed at being woken so early to answer such an elementary question, although he helpfully informs us that we’re running an hour behind schedule, so we relax a while longer.

This delay also shaves some time off our six‑hour wait for the famous toy train to Darjeeling, which we’re due to catch at 10am if it’s running.

We duly hop off the moving train as it’s pulling into the station and stop to look around.

It’s only 4:30am, but already we can tell New Jalpaiguri Station looks rather like all the rest.