Train Schedule

I will be spending 4 weeks in India from Dec 10th thru January 7th and I am finding that the railway schedule is extremely confusing. I have read elsewhere that there is an overnight train to Goa from Jaipur. Does anyone know if it runs daily? Also I plan to go from Goa to Aurangabad then from Aurangabad to Mumbai where I will fly out. Would it be better to go by train or to fly? It seems either way I go i will have to go through Mumbai and then backtrack back there again to leave.

Train Schedule

I used to find the official train site very confusing also, but that was before I found www.indiamike.com, and the many fabulous posts on How to Use Indian Trains by the train guru of the whole sub-continent, Steven Ber. I would strongly advise you to acquaint yourself with some of his posts, and then try again with the official site, which, once you%26#39;ve allowed for its peculiarities, is really very good (the Indian rail system is massive, so allowing you to negotiate your way through it with the pressing of a button is really quite a mammoth task).

In the meantime, to answer your immediate question, I checked the sites www.indianrail.gov.in/inet_metro_trns.html, and trainenquiry.com/TrainsBetwImpStation.aspxus鈥?/a> ';Madgaon'; and ';Jaipur'; as my source and destination stations, and found that train 2977 runs Mondays only, leaving Madgaon at 10:35 and arriving in Jaipur 14:05 Tuesday.

So, unless you plan to travel on a Monday, you are going to have to do the journey in two stages, changing at Mumbai or its nearby junction, Kalyan (A good map of the whole network is to be found at http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/maps/all_india.htm). You will find that there are three trains going from Madgaon to Mumbai (0104, daily; 2052, daily except Wednesdays; and 0106A, Sundays and Fridays only), and train 2955 is a daily service between Mumbai and Jaipur. If you%26#39;d rather not go right into Mumbai, train 2617 goes daily from Madgaon to Kalyan.

Despite some of the difficulties with train timings and connections, I%26#39;d still go by train in preference to flying; when you fly, you tend to spend a lot of time travelling out to the airport and hanging around the terminal going through the elaborate check-in procedures which seem to be part and parcel of every Indian flight. And, of course, when you land at the terminal, you have a long way to go to get to the city, and taxi fares from airports are generally much higher than if you were doing the same journey in reverse!

Certainly, Aurangabad to Mumbai is only a short train journey, so flying would not be advisable. If your purpose in going to Aurangabad is to see the caves, then consider also using Jalgaon as your railhead. There%26#39;s ample transport from there to the caves, and we found the Jalgaon-Mumbai rail network very easy indeed.