Vande Bharat

Recently, I visited India for my friend Shreyas's wedding in Bangalore. And then I wanted to go visit my parents in Chennai, which was a good opportunity to take India's newest superfast train: Vande Bharat.

I took the Mysore-Chennai route from Bangalore to Chennai and it was quite pleasant, but I'd gotten it into my head that this was going to be like East Asian or British trains and it's not that. I have a poor memory of the Shatabdi train I'd take on that route but I recall it being quite nice and fast. This was an incremental improvement over that.

Bangalore Station

Bangalore Central station is quite simple to maneouvre through. There's a big board of departures as soon as you enter and it's easy to get dropped off right at the entrance in your Uber. I've gotten used to British signage, though, and this station is not like that. One classic example is that the sign for the platform is labeled Platform 1. Once you're at platform 1, you get to see that there are other platforms. Bangalore Central is a through station, so you go underground through the walkways to get to your platform. This part was easy enough and the underground walkway was clean by Indian standards.

Once I was at my platform 7, the signage was quite good. It looks like the PWM LED signs had a duty cycle that doesn't show up but it was descriptive: indicating the train number that was next - which is exactly what I wanted. The station platform was quite empty for the hour until my train arrived. This changed quite a lot by the time actually arrived as lots of people started showing up just in time.

It turns out that I was at the right place for my coach so I found it quite easy but boarding here is the usual thing in India and you get a big crowd all trying to board at the same time. The service is timed and this is an intermediate station on the route so I suppose we were all trying to get on before it leaves. I waited till the end, seeing as it would be easy for me to board. There must have been others since the train left late.

Train Car

Most of the train is in a 3-2 configuration facing forward, though halfway through my coach there were some seats facing each other, still in 3-2. I was at the back of the car right next to the lavatory. In a normal Indian train this would be awful. However, there was no odour throughout the ride so they must have been keeping it clean. Another slight advantage of the whole thing was that my row doesn't have a third seat so I only had one neighbour and lots of room on my right.

There was quite a bit of legroom and the seats themselves were quite comfortable. Unlike the leather seats I'm used to on Indian Railways these were fabric seats. Not everyone was convinced they were clean: the lady in front of me had a towel on hers.

The toilets were right behind me: my side of the aisle had the Western-style and the other side had the Indian-style. I only looked at the Western-style one and it was quite nice. It didn't have the usual smell you associate with Indian Railways train toilets and was equipped with one of the bum blasters that had good water pressure. The toilet itself was the vacuum kind with stainless steel sides. The sink was clean and had water. I think I took a pee later in the ride and it was still clean - which is a big surprise.

The janitorial services showed up about 2 h in and mopped the floor of the coach, so I assume they dealt with the toilet as well. That's probably why an Indian train ride can end up with a cleaner toilet at the end than an East Midlands ride.

Speed

This was the biggest disappointment for me. I remember Vande Bharat being advertised as a superfast high-speed service and didn't realize that it isn't even close to it. For the majority of the ride from Bangalore to the first stop at Katpadi, the train ambled along at 108 km/h (67 mph). That's about what you get driving down I-5 from SF to LA. Hong Kong's Airport Express does 135 km/h from the Airport to the City so I was hoping that something built 25 years after that would be faster. I'm told this is because the trains are fast but the rails aren't fast yet. I'm all for incrementalism, so I hope things get faster by the time I'm there next!

This is also how I discovered that Chennai Central is called MGR Chennai Central

The train slowed to a crawl around Katpadi junction. The route has a strange looping curve to get there, probably because of geography, so this part makes sense. We'd pass a couple of trains that were shunted to sidings so that we could get past.

After Katpadi (where my parents boarded farther down the train), in the Tamil Nadu section, the train sped up quite a bit and was at its peak speed of 128 km/h (80 mph) for most of the time.

Overall, the ride was quite smooth. There was a little bit of lateral rocking but not much sound.

Amenities

The train had a Wi-Fi system, but it didn't seem to provide Internet connectivity. Instead it had some sort of infotainment setup. I connected to it on my phone out of curiosity.

It had an eclectic collection of movies and shows available from god knows when. I didn't actually end up playing any of them just because the view outside the window provided sufficient nostalgia fever to keep me going for the whole ride. I had phone service through Google Fi which gave me high-speed Internet for most of the ride over LTE but there were 15 to 20 minute blindspots. I imagine people with local providers probably had full connectivity and the infotainment was more of a trial-run system than a real full thing.

Some time into the journey (perhaps an hour) we got a bunch of snacks. These were mostly packaged either that day or the day before. Everyone seemed to get the exact same ones:

• A cream-filled hotdog bun
• A vanilla muffin
• A pakora with an accompanying packet of ketchup
• A chai mix - the hot water for which was provided later
• This "Chiwda" spicy fried mix which was honestly quite delicious. It's like the stuff we call "mixture" in Chennai but different

There was no charger at the seat that I saw, but each seat was provided with one water bottle to start with.

Chennai Station

Chennai Central seemed smaller than I recall, but that's probably because in my childhood and youth it seemed enormous. It's a terminus station so the platforms are all at the same level and you can just walk out. It is absolute chaos outside, though, as everyone's trying to find a way out.

My parents led me out of the station and then we waited outside the hospital until the guy found us. Traffic in Chennai is not nearly as bad as in Bangalore, though it is also much worse than I recall, but we were home sooner than I expected.