The Overnight Train from Chennai to Hyderabad

One of the things about international travel that makes it fun is the inevitable contrast of your ideas of about how things are going to be and how you find them. For the train ride from Chennai to Hyderabad- I envisioned us sitting in a train looking at the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh countryside as we read (or played video games), with meals in a nice dining car. Visions of Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar (great travel book).

The arrangements for this trip were made locally before we got here- I had suggested we take the train from Chennai to Hyderabad, not knowing…..that the two express trains for this route are both overnight. Turns out it is a tad hot here during the day, and trains are probably decent solar collectors. The train holds a couple thousand passengers- most are not in an air-conditioned car. So it makes sense to have these long trips at night. For our trip it was dark soon after we left the station in Chennai at 6 pm and light only for the last hour and half into Hyderabad at 8:10 am. And the glass in our “First AC” car was too thick to really look at what was going on outside. I spent some time standing in the outside door of our car looking out in the morning.

The trip was a fun adventure- but was not a chance to appreciate the diversity of the geography of south India and catch a glimpse of rural life. We had a fourth passenger with us in our 4-person compartment- at first I was disappointed that there would be an outsider in our little family group. The passenger was a young Indian business executive who was pleasant and nice to the kids and was sort of a guide to some of the ins and outs of the train. We had more food than we needed (thanks again to a friend of Najeeb’s who brought a portable feast to the hotel before we left for the train station) and we shared with him and had an early evening meal. There was joy for me in sharing the adventure with E and J- we chatted and they entertained each other by making up PowerPoint presentations on various topics and then grading them. I read and our friend caught up on Malayalam language movies (Molliwood?) on his portable DVD player (he is from Kerala, his wife is from Hyderabad and they are undecided what language to speak at home with their one-year old daughter).

Our “First Class AC” compartment had four beds that folded out from the wall- two large bunk beds and two below. E and J were on top. A train employee delivers clean sheets in individual packages along with pillows and blankets. The beds were large and relatively comfortable- but none of us slept too well, except for our new friend. Not sure whey he takes the train- he told me that the cost of airfare is comparable to First Class train travel, and from our brief experience here, domestic air travel seems very well developed. He did mention that fighting traffic to and from the airport was a disincentive for air travel for him. He seemed to enjoy the train travel- and perhaps he does not like to fly. With the cost of airfare comparable to First Class train travel- it would seem that trains that run between major urban areas that are well served by the air will be primarily used more and more for those that can’t afford air travel. I estimated that our train had about 40 passengers (if that many) in First Class out of a couple thousand on the train.

I think it was good for E and J to experience the trip- the train stations themselves are…interesting- they needed to see more of India outside expensive hotels, tourist sites, and the backseat of a car fighting through traffic. A factoid I can’t forget: the Indian Railway system is the largest employer in the world- with 1,200,000 employees. And we met a few on our journey.

Explore posts in the same categories: Chennai, Hyderabad

Tags: Chennai, Hyderabad, Malayalam, train

You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.