Ghumakkar Insights – Traveling in Indian Railways

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With the advent of Duronto non-stop trains there is a possibility to avail these trains if your destination is on the route close to eventual destination of the train and it is a technical halt of the train. Every long distance train has some technical halts where crew changes. If your destination is one such then it could be a boon. For example, Mumbai – Howrah Duronto has technical halts at Bhusaval, Nagpur, Bilaspur, TataNagar. So, people who are destined to let’s say Bilaspur or Tata Nagar can book the entire journey from Mumbai to Howrah but get down at these stations when trains stop there. In my recent journey from Mumbai to Howrah, there were several such passengers who got down at Tata Nagar and Kharagpur. You may just have to pay extra upto Howrah for this convenience. Railways does not publish a list of technical halts for a train but you can easily figure them out by experience, talking to train crew, passengers or characteristics that it is a major station, change of railway division and around 5-7 hours from previous technical halt.

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Around Pune – Bhuleshwar, Narayanpur and Baneshwar

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Legend says that it was done like this so that temple is not destroyed by invaders. However, the carvings inside are stupendous and comparable to one finds in Ajanta and Ellora but alas many of them are broken. There are depictions of scenes from Ramayan and Mahabharata on either side of temple like “Sita-haran”, “Bharat-Milap” etc.

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Koyna and Konkan

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During 15th Aug weekend, we planned a trip to Koyna region. Koyna is a region nestled in the Sahaydri mountains (western ghats) of Maharashtra…

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