India’s iconic train journeys and how to do them

This extraordinary network carried a record 30 million people on its busiest day in late 2024, travelling on its 82,210 miles of track and via incredible feats of engineering.

There are vintage Toy Trains, Orient-Express-style luxury journeys, and passenger trains with multiple classes taking you past landscapes from waterfalls to desert; while every train provides a window into Indian society.

Here are 10 of the country’s best train rides to discover.

1. The Nilgiri Mountain Railway, Tamil Nadu

Starts: Mettupalyam

Ends: Ooty

Best for: back-in-time atmosphere 

A UNESCO World Heritage site, the Nilgiri (‘Blue Mountain’) Railway dates from 1889, and is India’s only rack-and-pin, and slowest, railway, creeping over vertiginous gradients from Mettupalyam to Ooty. The tiny, box-like, blue-and-cream train takes five hours to cover the 46km to Ooty (2,240m), winding through 16 tunnels and across 250 bridges, and is not only immortalised in the Bollywood film Dil Se.. where Sharukh Khan dances on the train’s roof, but also as Ashima in Thomas the Tank Engine.

With views that sweep across the thickly knitted greenery of Tamil Nadu’s Western Ghats. The journey back downhill whips by in a mere three-and-a-half hours.

Great Rail Journeys (01904 521 936; greatrail.com) offers a 13-night Discover Southern India and Kerala trip from £2,799 per person, including flights, hotels and most meals. Done independently it’s only £1.30 each way in first class; book through IRCTC or Cleartrip.

IndiGo (goindigo.in) flies from Chennai to Coimbatore International Airport from £60 return. Savoy Hotel (423 2225500; seleqtionshotels.com) a heritage hotel in Ooty has doubles from £180 per night, not including breakfast. The Residency Towers Coimbatore (422 224 1414, theresidency.com, doubles from £80 including breakfast) is about an hour south of Mettupalyam, but a much more luxurious choice than any nearer the station. 

2. Island Express, Kerala

Starts: Bengaluru 

Ends: Kanyakumari 

Best for: Sea views

The Island Express is a route that starts in Bengaluru and ends at India’s southernmost Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, where the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal meet. The entire route takes almost 20 hours: instead, opt for a 3.5-hour highlight: the 100km from the copper-cliffed beach resort of Varkala in Kerala to Kanyakumari.

This is an island-hopping coastal trip through dense coconut groves and across the mirror of Ashtamudi Lake. You’ll glimpse the backwaters through the reeds, lipstick-bright clothes being scrubbed on the riverbank, coir-woven fishing boats, and daily life gliding past.

One-way air-conditioned first class (1AC), £6; book through IRCTC or Cleartrip. Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) International Airport is the nearest airport to Varkala; Emirates (emirates.com) flies from London to Trivandrum, with one stop, from £700 return

The Leela Kovalam (0800 026 1111; theleela.com), close to Trivandrum, has doubles from £220 per night, including breakfast. Annai Resorts & Spa (94882 46666; annairesorts.com), with swimming pools overlooking the coast, is close to Kanyakumari.

3. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, Himalayas

Starts: New Jalpaiguri

Ends: Darjeeling

Best for: Steam lovers 

The railway that inspired Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is a sublime journey through the Himalayas, a railway to a hill station favoured by English colonials chasing cooler summer weather. Rather romantically known as the ‘train to the clouds’, there are still several steam powered services for tourists daily, making it one of India’s most enchantingly retro journeys. Modern locomotives also run on the route. Together with the Nilgiri and Kalka–Shimla lines, this is one of the Unesco-listed ‘Mountain Railways of India’. While the route officially starts in New Jalpaiguri, Siliguri is where all the best hotels are located and you can start your journey from there too.

Great Rail Journeys (greatrail.com) Darjeeling and the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan journey includes a trip on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (15 nights £5,199 per person based on two sharing, including flights). There are numerous regular flights from both Delhi and Kolkata direct to Bagdogra airport, 15km (9 miles) from Siliguri.

Mayfair Tea Resort (92375 00101, mayfairhotels.com, doubles from £130 including breakfast) has slightly flouncy, antique-filled rooms on a tea plantation near Siliguri. Glenburn Tea Estate  (33 2288 5630, glenburnteaestate.com, doubles £500 including breakfast), a gloriously set, historic mansion on a tea plantation, run by the Prakash ‘Chaiwalla’ family since 1859.

4. Maharashtra Splendour, Maharashtra and Goa

Starts: Mumbai 

Ends: Mumbai 

Best for: Temple stops in style

Travel in style on the Deccan Odyssey (deccanodyssey.com), serving central India, a 21-coach luxury train where each coach is inspired by a region of Maharashtra. Including two restaurants, plus G&T sundowners and cultural performances as per your preference, there are six routes, most thrilling of which is the seven-day Maharashtra Splendour tour from Mumbai.

On the way you have the chance to visit the Unesco World Heritage sites of Ellora and Ajanta, otherworldly temples carved out of caves, before travelling on to the palm-fringed beaches of Goa, visiting the coast and a spice plantation before making your regal passage back to Mumbai.

Deccan Odyssey (deccanodyssey.com, £6,500/9,300 for 1/2 people in a deluxe cabin, including all meals. Airlines including Air India (airindia.com) fly to Mumbai, from £420. 

The Oberoi, Mumbai (22 6632 5757, oberoihotels.com, doubles from £280 including breakfast) has views over Mumbai’s illuminated stretch of seafront known as the city’s ‘Diamond Necklace’.

5. Kalka to Shimla Toy Train, Himalayas

Starts: Kalka 

Ends: Shimla

Best for: Himalayan views

This ‘Toy Train’ began construction in 1898, another route to facilitate journeys to escape the summer heat, this time to the hill station of Shimla. It’s a Unesco-listed narrow-gauge railway, and chugs through mountains from Kalka to Shimla in five hours, its route eased by 103 tunnels, and 864 bridges, all against a backdrop of snow-dusted Himalayas. Among choices for this route, the most comfortable is the Shivalik Deluxe Express, with big windows and comfortable seats, leaving at 5.45am from Kalka. Also recommended is the light-filled Kalka Shimla Express with ‘vista-dome’ windows in the roof as well as the sides, leaving at 6.20am.

Tickets on the Shivalik Deluxe/Kalka Shimla cost £5.50/3 in AC Chair Class. Cox & Kings (coxandkings.co.uk) takes the Toy Train as part of their Golden Triangle & Shimla tour (12 nights £3,445 per person based on two sharing, including flights). 

Airlines including Air India (airindia.com) fly from Delhi to Chandigarh (1 hour), around 20km from Kalka, from £60 return. 

Timber Trail Resort (1792 232 340, timbertrail.in, doubles from £70 including breakfast) has pools, views and… a cable car, and is around a half-hour taxi ride to Kalka railway station. Wildflower Hall, Shimla in the Himalayas – An Oberoi Resort (177 264 8585, oberoihotels.com, doubles from £370 including breakfast). 

6. Goa Express, Goa and Karnataka

Starts: Vasco da Gam

Ends: Londa Junction 

Best for: Waterfalls

This journey, starting from Vasco da Gama, close to the Portuguese churches and villas, and quieter golden-sand beaches of southern Goa, travels along a stretch of the Arabian Sea and the Goa coast, before passing the hills of the Western Ghats. Your destination is Londa Junction at the border with Karnataka, in an area thick with forests, and the route passes close to the base of the 603m-high Dudhsagar (‘Sea of Milk’) Waterfalls (best after the monsoon).

From Londa Junction, you’re well placed to explore the jungle of the Western Ghats, home to elephants, flying squirrels and rich birdlife as well as whitewater rafting and kayaking on the Kali River, with tourism concentrated around Dandeli to the south of Londa.

First class AC tickets cost £12, booked via Indian Rail (indianrail.gov.in). Flights with Air India to Manohar International Airport, in Goa, around an hour by road from Vasco da Gama, cost from around £500 return from London. 

The Postcard Cuelim (7999555222, postcardresorts.com, doubles £350 including breakfast) is a beautiful small hotel in a Portuguese-era mansion, a half-hour drive from Vasco da Gama station.

Wild Kasarwadi (9620570093, wildkasarwadi.com, doubles from £85 including meals) is one of many jungle lodges south of Londa, around 40 minutes drive south of Londa Junction. 

7. Marwar – Khambli Ghat MG Passenger Special, Rajasthan

Starts: Khambli Ghat

Ends: Deoghar

Best for: Local life 

All aboard the metre-gauge Passenger Special from one-horse Khambli Ghat station close to Deoghar, a small town about 2.5 hours by car from Udaipur, Rajasthan’s bone-white lakeside city. The train goes all the way to Marwar, but the recommended stretch is to Phulad, just over an hour through the sun-bleached scrub of the Aravalli Range, crossing multiple remote bridges on the way.

Be minded that this is a local, rural train route and in taking it you’ll share the wooden benches with pilgrims and villagers. Get a lift back to your hotel from Phulad.  If you’d prefer to take the journey in more comfort, the Valley Queen Heritage replica steam train, launched in 2023, plies this same routet (tickets £18.50).

Book through Dev Shree in Deogarh, who arranges a guide who will take you and buy you tickets to board a local train, plus a driver to pick you up from Phulad. Fly to Udaipur from Delhi for £41 one way with Indigo or Air India. Dev Shree (85 2954 8858, devshreedeogarh.com, doubles from £270 including breakfast) is a luxury heritage resort on the banks of the beautiful Ragho Sagar Lake. 

8. Maharajas’ Express, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan

Starts: Delhi

Ends: Delhi

Best for: Luxury & cocktails

The kingly Maharajas’ Express is India’s Orient Express, and the one to choose if you like your journeys saluted by beturbaned sentinels as you leave the station. With 23 gilded carriages, there are four routes around India’s north and central areas, the shortest and most iconic of which is the Treasures of India, which visits India’s Golden Triangle: Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, with time to explore, as well as stops on the way to visit the ghostly town of Fatehpur Sikri, and the epic Ranthambore Tiger Reserve to spot big cats amid tangling jungle and ancient ruins.

The three-night, four-day Treasures of India tour costs £3,785 per person based on two people sharing. Fly to Delhi from London with Air India, British Airways, and many more, with return flights starting at £500. The Imperial Delhi (11 23341234, theimperialindia.com, doubles from £300 including breakfast), in New Delhi, is a wood-panelled, marble-lined historic hotel. 

9. Mandovi Express, Maharashtra and Goa

Starts in: Mumbai

Ends in: Madgoan 

Best for: Food and atmosphere

This 12-hour trip from Mumbai to Goa is for the hardy train traveller, ideally in a class where the windows open to feel the breeze on your face, and a cavalcade of hawkers at every stop. Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, built in 1878, is like a fever-dream St Pancras, and then the city slips away and the route takes you southwards, over 2,000 bridges and almost 100 tunnels, the coast to your right, the Western Ghats to your left. You’ll cross the 64m-high Panval Viaduct which seems to float above the tree canopy, and get off at Madgoan to explore Goa’s Portuguese heritage and palm-nodding beaches.

The Jan Shatabdi Express runs a similar route (from Mumbai’s Dadar station) a mere nine hours 20 minutes, leaving at 5.10am, and offering Executive Vistadome seating (£20.50). If you prefer to travel overnight, take the Konkan Express, which costs £25 one way in first class AC sleeper overnight (11 hours 40 minutes).

Airlines including Air India (airindia.com) fly to Mumbai, from £420. Taj Mahal Palace (022 6665 3366, tajhotels.com, doubles from £300 including breakfast) is an icon of Mumbai, with heritage rooms overlooking the Gateway to India and waterfront. 

Taj Exotica Resort & Spa (960-400 600, tajhotels.com, doubles from 400 including breakfast) is on the beachfront a 20-minute taxi from Madgoan. 

10. Golden Chariot: Jewels of South, Karnataka and Kerala

Starts: Bengaluru

Ends: Bengaluru

Best for: Southern luxury

Another lavish tourist train, the Golden Chariot (goldenchariot.org) offers not only sumptuous cabins and restaurants, but an ayurvedic spa on board. Take your pick from three great southern routes, including the ‘Jewels of South’ six-night trip that starts in Bengaluru, going on to Mysore, the lavish 19th-century Chettinad mansions, and the Unesco-listed site of Hampi.

The trip continues to the historic port of Fort Kochi and tranquil Kumarakom, where you’ll get to take a boat trip on the backwaters, before heading back to Bengaluru.

Golden Chariot (goldenchariot.org, Jewels of South tour £3,700 based on two sharing). Fly to Bengaluru with airlines such as Air India, British Airways or Emirates from £500 direct return. The Oberoi, Bengaluru (011-69110606, oberoihotels.com, doubles from £250 including breakfast) is enveloped in landscaped greenery.