The Shatabdi to Delhi

I am making a trip to Hyderabad to surprise my parents for Deepawali. I'll also be stopping in Delhi on the way to take care of some business, so I took off from Chandigarh on the 6:15pm Shatabdi to Delhi. Now I am not very familiar with the trains in India. My usage of them even when I lived here was limited to the Chennai/Charminar express trains that took me to Chennai and back, and the Godavari that took us to Vizag every summer. I'd be hard pressed to name a fourth train from among the largest train network in the world! Add Shatabdi to that list now.

All I knew about this train was that it was quite a fast train going from C'garh to Delhi in about 3.5 hours, as compared to the 5 hours that a bus takes and 6 hours that a regular train takes. Since the journey is very short and not overnight, almost all trains on this route are "chair cars" as opposed to "sleepers". I also knew that this train was fully air-conditioned. At C'garh it arrived and departed barely 10 mins late. I had asked for and got a window seat when I booked my seats on the Indian Railways website, but since the journey started almost at sunset, I didn't have much of a view.

Almost as soon as it took off from C'garh, a bunch of uniformed IR workers started serving snacks. I thought I'd have to pay for them or atleast have ordered them in advance. Turned out neither was the case. The food service was part of the ticket price! So for Rs. 505 I was not only being taken from C'garh to Delhi in a nice, clean a/c train, I was being fed as well. And darn it all if they didn't keep bringing the food almost the entire length of the trip! The food included -

1. A snack plate with a sanwich, a samosa with ketchup, "saunpapdi", mango juice and some hard candy.
2. Tomato Soup with breadsticks (unfortunately they served the breadsticks first and I thought that was all I was getting and I ate them up before the soup showed up!)
3. Dinner plate with rice, roti, dal, panneer curry and a small salad.
4. Ice Cream.

I have no idea why anyone would travel by flight from C'garh to Delhi seeing as this train is available. Taking into account the flight check in times etc, this train compares very well with the flight and it costs a fraction of what the flight does. Best of all you don't have to put up with the snooty flight attendents and the redundant security and then pay for the water and peanuts they serve you on the flight. I've always had a lot of respect for the way Indian Railways runs its business (outside of Bihar) but this confirmed it. Indian Railways, you rock!