Well this is nearly it for our train travels across India. We’ve caught our final Indian Railways train from Chandīgarh to New Delhi – a short trip of just under three and a half hours. Our car driver collected us from the hotel in Shimla this morning and dropped us off at Chandigarh railway station. The train departed at 12.05, but we were there by 11.30 so plenty of time to find our platform.

Like many of the stations we have been through on this trip, Chandigah is being rebuilt. It looks like they have nearly completed the large new terminal building, but the construction of new over foot bridge is continuing. The lack of health and safety is pretty remarkable. The passengers wandering along the platforms alongside half constructed columns with steel supports sticking out – without any barriers between them. As for the construction workers, although most are wearing hard hats, they are also mostly wearing flip flops! I think my health and safety colleagues would have a funny turn at the sight.

As it’s only a short journey we’re in a seated air conditioned first class carriage. It’s comfortable, but not like one of the brand new carriages we travelled in from Udaipur to Jaipur on. Shortly after leaving Chandigarh the train staff started serving lunch – a spicy tomato soup to start, followed by a vegetable curry with dhal and chapatti. There was also ice cream on offer as a desert, but sadly not vegan ice cream so we declined that.

When we were doing the tour of the secretariat  building in Chandigah a few days ago I was chatting to a young Portuguese women about the Indian trains. She had tried to book the trains herself before they arrived in India – it’s not possible to just turn up and buy a ticket here. We compared notes on trying to use the (very frustrating) Indian Railways booking system. She had been unable to set up an account as it kept asking for her mobile number so it could send her a unique code – but it wouldn’t work with her European number. I felt proud that I’d managed to navigate the system and successfully set up an account (I think I used an email to get the code). What’s more I managed to book 12 train tickets for us, including five overnight trains, and remarkably they have all worked. A few of them ran a bit late, but we got to all of the destinations on our schedule on the right date.

I’m glad I booked us first class travel – although it’s not like first class travel in the UK. What we are generally paying more for is to have our own space, which on a 12 or 15 hour train ride, is very welcome. Apart from the first overnight train where we shared our cabin with a mother and daughter who disembarked somewhere at 2am in the morning, we have had our own two-berth cabins. It’s been funny when we’ve turned up at posh hotels to be asked ‘where have you flown from?’. I think they’ve been surprised we took the train as I think most of the growing middle class travellers in India would consider the trains a bit rough. They’re not entirely wrong, there have certainly been some train toilets I never want to see again, but all in all the trains have served their purpose and got us across this vast and extraordinary country on time and for a reasonable price.