We travel to Bangalore almost once a year if not more. Up to the last year we always thought it was a great idea to catch a low cost flight and reach there in two and a half hours flat. However with the economy being what it is, this time we had to rethink. We usually do our tickets for this trip in advance (after all you can’t just turn up and catch a bus to Bangalore from New Delhi, like we keep doing when we go to the hills). So, around September 2008 when we looked (for a December 2008 trip) the fuel and hence the air ticket prices were quite high.

Entering Bhusawal Station on the way to Delhi, the Karnataka Express Train behind my coach

We decided to book our tickets in Rajdhani Express and brave it out for 36 hours. Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel on a train, it is only that the last time we took a Rajdhani it was so late (fog in the North and rains in the South) that we had cancelled our return tickets and booked a low cost flight instead. Our return tickets this time were in Karnataka Express, AC III both ways. Mercifully there was no side middle berth (which we saw on Mangalore Express) on any of these trains.

So what is your guess? The journey must have been comparable, right? I don’t think so.

The biggest advantage of traveling by the Rajdhani Express to Bangalore, is the time saved (though I wonder what we do with the amount of time we try to keep saving, sometimes it feels it is better to spend that time on rain, rather than in my mundane activities). It takes 36 hours to reach Bangalore by Rajdhani and 42 by Karnataka Express. The tickets of the Rajdhani Express are a bit more expensive but then they serve you meals throughout and that is included in the ticket price.

Now before you read any further (I teach college kids, that is my day job. You can imagine a very teacher like voice saying these lines) it would make a lot of sense to listen to the video first. Listen because there is not much of a video there, the still photograph of the train is all you will see. My elder nephew did all these tricks so that I could upload the MP3 on Youtube which I am told is otherwise not possible. In the video after two minutes you can listen to a small sample of the tunes they keep playing on the public address system of the train.

How do you find the welcome after boarding the Rajdhani Express train? That cacophony continues for a good ten minutes when you board the train and it can send small children into a crying frenzy! They wake you up between 6.00 and 7.00 am in the morning to drink tea! Don’t get me wrong, I live on tea but at 6.00 am I like only one thing and that is sleep!

The sample song that you listened to (what? you have not listen to the soundtrack of the video even now?) they play it at all the hours of day and night. One of the things I am looking forward on a 36 hour journey is to catch up on sleep! It is impossible with the music blaring at all hours at a volume over which I have no control. It might have made sense to play music (for a limited period) in an era when music players were not in every device you could think of! Now if I wish to listen to a song I can with my mobile phone and so can almost everyone that is the target market of the Rajdhani Express. Then they have been playing the same songs since last 20 years or so it feels. We realized this time that there is a person in the pantry whose job is to play the songs. You can request him to play it down but whether he will comply and for how long is any body’s guess.

The sound system is pathetic. It just drives you nuts with the repetitive music in screeching tones at all hours. I wonder if there is someone who likes to listen to it, but then I am sure the Indian Railway is not going to conduct a customer satisfaction survey anytime soon. When I posted a shorter version of this post on my blog one of our friends (yes we know Ranjit) suggested that there is a knob at the side of the speakers through which you can turn the music down. Let me know if you could do this on the train.

Also Rajdhani being an important train the number of ‘official’ looking people is much higher on it than Karnataka Express. So, this time when I tried traveling on the doors* of Rajdhani Express (a first for me) quite promptly I was told that due to the open doors the coach becomes heated as hot air would go in every time someone came out of the AC section. Now had he told me that it was risky to travel at the door I could have got into an argument but what do I do if someone tells me that my foolishness would interfere with others’ comfort? I closed the door and so did another person hanging on the other side. But as soon as those ‘official’ people went ahead, he opened the gate again. So did I but not for long, as I was in no mood to play this game again and again. No such hassles on the Karnataka Express, much less ‘official’ looking people and much more acceptance of traveling at the door.

Now would you blame me if I wish to avoid the Rajdhani Express train the next time around even though if it means sitting for longer in the Karnataka Express but mercifully without a public address system?

However, when I posted my experience of Rajdhani at Indiamike, not too many people seem to mind the music. On the other hand, people have done more outlandish things than just traveling on the door of a train.

*Traveling at the door is very common on Indian train but by no means encouraged by the railway staff.