Episode 03: Planning The Journey.

Once the trip was confirmed, I had to book tickets upto Delhi( the reporting point for the trip) and also apply leave in office. Applying for leave was not great problem because I already had enough leave in my account.

Only the great headache was booking the tickets. I didn’t have the money to book and other guys were busy in their exams .Anyway I checked on internet in Indian Railways Site. Huh!!! There was no availability on 24^th may from Pune to Delhi, even in AC. As per the schedule we had to reach Delhi on 26^th morning. Actually it is the 24 hours journey in train to reach Delhi. So we could leave Pune on 25^th early morning around 3-5 Am. So I tried for 25^th. It was on Friday morning. There was long waiting list. I already knew that these waiting lists were never going to be confirmed even at the time of journey. Already I had pretty good experience in Indian railway.

Then I did some changes in the boarding points and as well as trains. For the god sake, I saw few RAC (Reservation After Cancellation) seats, if we boarded on the train(GOA EXPRESS) in its starting station i.e GOA. I came to know one new thing regarding train ticket booking .That’s why there is one saying “The more u practice (experience), the more u become perfect.”

I could not book online also because my credit card was already blocked. I didn’t cleared my outstanding in due date. Then there was no alternative other than calling my friends at college to book the tickets despite their exams. They wasted one whole day but could not book the tickets due to some misunderstanding. They were not so much experience in Train Ticket Booking.

Then I borrowed 4k from my roommate Rahul and went to station for booking. We total were six together. Diren doing MCA, Navin doing MBA, Praveen doing BBA and one gal, Niru doing BBA . all in same college , Sinhgad Technical Education Society,Pune. And the Fifth guy Srijan doing Master in Biotech in Pune University.

As per rule we could take 6 persons tickets in one form. But I planned to book 3 persons in each ticket. So in future even if we had to cancel, it would be easy to cancel. After along queue, my turn came. I hurriedly gave the forms. I was so scared that there might not be any mistake. If so I would get rejected and my turn would be last in the queue again just to correct a small mistake.

Thanx god !! There was no error but the person at ticket counter said there was a long waiting. I got shocked. I asked him we want to board from the starting station. At that very moment, I started thinking hell lots of thing at once. It would be lot of torture to travel in local. I didn’t have money to go by air also n so on ….

But this time my luck didn’t screw me. There was the RAC available .RAC 23-RAC28. I heard that RAC tickets would be confirmed easily. He also suggested me to change the boarding point i.e Pune after few days from Central Station. The train timing was 4.30 AM on Friday 25^th May. It was perfect timing indeed. With the great pleasure, I paid RS 3282, 547 bucks each.

Then after few days I called up my friend Srijan and went to Central Station to change the boarding point. Every day I checked out status of our ticket in the official site. Day by day its RAC Number was getting down .Finally It was confirmed but Seats were dispersed in 3 different Compartments. Three seats in S3 (Sleeper 3), two in S9 and last one in S12. But confirmed tickets were enough. Seats, we could manage later on.

Then I started counting days. Still 8 more days to go. It was just 17^th may. I was dreaming about the fun n all….