mumbai to tirupati

we (my uncle, my cousin, and me), traveled then from mumbai to tirupati, where my grandparents live. from there we picked up my grandmother, and went to a wedding in bangalore.

indian rail is the largest railway network in the world. i've never had to change trains. true, i only really travel to big cities, but still - in germany many connections between frankfurt and berlin require you to change! the only downside is that the trains are old and take a long time. an "express" train between mumbai and tirupati took 21 hours.



the other huge downside is getting reservations, which is really difficult. any body can BUY a ticket, but not everybody gets their ticket CONFIRMED. the confirmation is the key thing in railway travel in india. if your ticket isnt confirmed and you bought it with cash, you lose the money (i think), but if you bought it with a credit card then your money is refunded.

on every train they write who has official confirmed reservations (i guess in case you dont own a phone or have internet access, or basically a tradition from before these two technologies that still exists) on a piece of paper which is pasted to the side of the train. if you look closely at the above picture, many names have HO next to them, which stands for "Home Office." This means that someone who knew someone in railways helped people get their tickets confirmed. nobody i asked knew what PQ stood for. my uncle works for the ministry of home affairs, and helped us. if you're not lucky enough to have influential uncles, then you either need to book very early (my aunt and uncle going to the same wedding said they bought their ticket 1.5 months beforehand), be willing to pay more at the risk of losing all your money, or cross your fingers.