Pause…

Want to build some Indian cars while I ponder and read over some more books. I have never looked at India with any interest before

India rethink

After a bit of reading on India, by mark twain, gandhi and some others I might want to rethink my route. I want to take in only some sites

Calcutta

The Kumbh Mela…

possibly Allahabad, Hardiwar, Ujjain & Nashik for its pilgrimage history.

• In fact the railway stations for these 4 towns was designed around the demands of these pilgrimages and the millions of people who would come every 4 years.

Chennai, in a nation with few cars, aparently it is the car capital

Hyderabad

Mumbai & Matheran

Pune

Jaipur

Agrah for the Taj Mahal

Chandigarh (le cobusier designed it) , and of course

New Delhi

View Larger Map

Calcutta south

Trains in the NE have a bad rap, poor maintenece etc.

routes south

Junction @ Kharagpur

South coastal route, to Bhubaneshwar, Orissa Privince

West to Jamshedpur, Raipur then south, bypassing Orissa through the mountains

Distances in hours south:

Bhubaneshwar 7h

Vishakhapatnam 14h

Chennai 28h

Calcutta

Howarth Junction is the central station.

From Raxual its a minimum 18 hours trip.

Indiarailinfo is the best resource.

Train 3022 is the express from Raxaul to Howarth Jn.

• 1000-0400+1 | 693km | Sleeper Rs 140 / AC2 Rs 239

Currently the trains for today was running 4 hours late at Muzaffarpur and 2.5 hours late just outside Calcutta.

Google Earth tour of 3022’s route.

Raxaul

Has both meter guage and broad gauge network. It is a major town but not the focal point of the local services.

Gorakhpur is the most influential major center.

Raxaul lies to the east along one of the paths north of the Ganges converging again at Katihar

about a dozen Meter gauge trains run each way between Narkatiagani and Darbhanga.

Other routes from Gorakhupur – Narkatiagani & around Samastipur have either been converted or are being converted to broad guage.

Its important as the meter gauge trains on the Narkatiagani to Darbhanga cover 192km in 8hours, about 25km/h

where as the fewer broad gauge trains from Narkatiagani to Samastipur cover 210km in 4.5hours

next stop Calcutta

There are 2 ways that I can see to make the trip. You can take the direct daily Mithila Express,

take the 0600 meter gauge to Darbhanga (a1330) then at 1445 the Mithilanchal Express

take a train to Muzaffarpur Junction then on the Bagh Express to Howrath Junction.

There are a couple of other routes too, after checking it appears that the Bagh express has much better availability than the Mithila. eg: sleeper class still has availablility for tomorrows dep, the Mithila has a Wait List for all classes for the next 8 days.

This is likely due to the tourist factor and border crossings. It also keeps much better time, at least over the last month.

alternative to nathula

assuming by the time i take the trip, nathu la is still closed to foreign touists, there is one alternative.

Lasha – Kathmandu – India

There are four border crossings open to tourists. The Sunauli-Bhairawa border crossing is the closest to Varanasi, the Raxaul-Birganj crossing to Patna, Kolkata, and Siliguri-Kakarbhitta is to Darjeeling. The Banbassa-Mahendrenagar border crossing in the extreme west of Nepal, is the closest to Delhi.

The crossing between Nepal and Tibet via Kodari is open to independent travelers entering Nepal, but only to organised groups entering Tibet. Wikitravel, Nepal

Birganj

• Birganj is the best border crossing from the point of view of accessibility.
• The others to the west ae contrary to the intended path
• The east roads skirt Everest

View Larger Map

Janakpurd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janakpurdham

Site of nepals last railway. Also one of the fastest growing centers. Should offer a more interesting alternative to Biranji

Crossing

There are only a few crossngs open to visitors. This will mean I will have to re-evaluate a couple of countries…

China, Nepal, Vietnam, India, Butan

Hopefully there is some good data online, foreign affairs?

Nathu La – Gangtok

Gangtok is the capital of east Sikkim

http://www.indialine.com/travel/sikkim/nathula-pass.html

Xigaze – Nathu La

Only a couple of blogs about getting in to India this way

• http://praveenkm2.blogspot.com/2009/05/day-60-may-7-nathu-la-saga.html
• http://404phylenotfound.blogspot.com/2009/03/trip-to-north-east-part-ii.html

Still have no idea if you can get through. Chinese and Indian tourists regularly go right up to the border crossing. It seems advanced notification to the local military might go a long way to slipping through during trading hours?

Lhasa

Seems a bit or a tourist mecca and probably tourist trap, both foreign and chinese tourists flock there

The face of Lhasa appears Chinese due to this and policies of migration

at about 110 yuan per night its still cheap, there are plenty of 5 stars too.

The web has lots of advice and opinions, very little helpful or positive

Contrary to alot of posts on Tibet, actual travel blogs report free and open travel all over Tibet

• http://www.travbuddy.com/Tibet-travel-blogs-p608
• http://www.travelpod.com/blogs/0/China/Lhasa.html

Buses

• http://www.57tibet.com/TIBET/Html/2005715201659-1.html

Getting out

Lhasa to Katmandu, seems like the busiest unseald highway in the world, tour busses leave daily, regular busses as well, jeeps, bicycles, probably some horses too.

There is a bus to the southern part of Xigaze, 38 yuan

• http://www.51766.com/zhuti/11001/1100162470.html

Lanzhou – Lhasa, The Tibetan Plain

Probably the biggest railway engineering project this century, so far anway.

青藏铁路

As usual the best summary in wikipedia:

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9D%92%E8%97%8F%E9%93%81%E8%B7%AF

See this forum for the best pictures http://bbs.hasea.com/forum-76-1.html

See this blog for even more: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/indexlist_1263753325_6.html

Tickets are reportedly hard to get and even hard seats can be vastly inflated by scalpers, or tourist operators.

Starts at 900 yuan

As a backup there as still buses

• 2216km 380 Yuan, 3 days

Again the Kunming alternative shows up

• http://wikitravel.org/en/Yunnan_tourist_trail