Asia,  Country Guides,  India,  TDM,  Tips

How to book IRCTC Indian Trains online via 12go.asia as a Tourist

UPDATE July 2019

For the past few months, there has been another simple way to buy train tickets without going through the IRCTC website. It is 12go.asia (click here to go to the site)

What you need to know about this site based in Singapore :

  • It allows to buy only the 100 most popular trips in India (a priori they are the most popular trips for tourists too), the list of trips covered are here
  • You choose your tickets and pay at 12go.asia. They then make the reservation with the Indian train system IRCTC (as an agency). Only when they manage to secure and actually book the tickets you can consider that you really have your train tickets. So wait for their confirmation before booking a hotel!
  • You can only book some train classes. Anyway, these are the classes whose comfort is “bearable” by tourists. I will always advise you to choose the “AC chair” class for short trips (with air conditioning) and “AC1, AC2, or AC3 Tier Sleeper” (beds with air conditioning, AC1 being the most classy) for long trips. The “Sleeper Class”, without air conditioning, may be too roots for you.
  • Of course, they take a commission on each ticket booked so the fares seen on IRCTC and 12go.asia will not be the same. For example, a ticket sold 12€ on IRCTC will cost 18€ on this website.
  • But it’s a simple solution and a good alternative to the official IRCTC website which has been bugging for months . Be careful, I never tested this site (I don’t travel in India anymore), but I had very good feedback.
Easy to understand interface and translated into French

To learn more about India, consult our itinerary in North India (18 days, budget, tips and advice)

UPDATE October 2018

Many of you have told us about your difficulties in booking your train tickets on the IRCTC.

Even if you follow the instructions in this article (foreign numbers no longer receive the OTP number). It seems indeed that IRCTC is getting more and more complicated (welcome to India).

If you need assistance, you can contact the owner of the Airbnb that we used to occupy in Udaipur. Catherine is French, lives in India and runs a travel agency there. We did not use her services but she confirmed that she can assist you with the booking of train tickets as well as cabs, hotels, guides, … Her e-mail : [email protected].

We don’t touch ANY COMMISSION, it’s just to help you. Have a good trip!

The train is the safest and most economical option for travel in India. If you know your journeys in advance, I advise you to book your tickets 2 to 3 months in advance, to travel in good conditions and especially to have seats (they leave very quickly). Otherwise, you will have to go through Indian agencies when you will be there and pay the price plus a commission.

Update July 2017

From the end of July 2017, you can now create an account directly on IRCTC (the official Indian train reservation site) and receive an SMS to validate the account on your French cell phone number (before, you could only give an Indian number).

Attention: All this must be done outside the IRCTC site maintenance period (i.e. daily between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Indian time)

And you must understand English

Account creation and activation

To do this, in the account creation form, specify 33 in the first field of theaccount creation formISD-Mobile then enter your TRUE number (without the 0) like 601234567

Don’t get the wrong number or email, because it won’t be possible to change it afterwards and you won’t be able to validate your account otherwise.

You will see a message displayed :

International/NRI users with ISD code other than 91 have to pay Registration fees after successful registration i.e. on first login. Please note that the Registration fee for International/NRI users is Rs. 100 + GST.

You will have to pay 100Rs. + tax to be able to buy the tickets (about 1,3€)

You can book your tickets 365 days before the departure date and you will have access to the tickets reserved for tourists. You can pay with Visa, Mastercard.

To pay the 100Rs. + tax, relocate, you will see a payment page right away.

Click on Multiple Payement Service and check “Credit & Debit cards” => Make Payment

Please note that 3D Secure is enabled for this payment.

As soon as the payment is validated, have your phone number (and email address if not already done) checked

Then, once the account has been activated all this, take your user id (user id = isn’t your email address but the user id you chose when you created the account) and your password to reconnect.

Buying Tickets

If you wish to purchase tourist tickets (on sale 365 days in advance), chooseForeign Tourist Booking.

If you want to reserve the seats for premises (more choices/classes, but on sale only 3 months before), click on Book Ticket

I recommend, for night trips, the AC 2 (2nd class with air conditioning) or AC 3 (3rd class with air conditioning) in upper place (at the very top) so that you can lie down directly and sleep. If you are in the lower seat, you may have to wait until everyone decides to go to bed before you can lie down. Avoid “side lower” or “side upper” because the seats are smaller. For day trips and not too long trips, AC Chair Car can be a good option. If it’s not too hot, opt for the Sleeper class to travel like Indians.

Here you will find pictures of the different train classes.

Sometimes the class you choose simply does not exist on the date you choose. For example, I wanted the 1st class for Khajuraho – Varanasi but this isn’t possible so they offered me AC 3 Tier instead.

Have a good trip!

August 2018: It is possible that the interface of the site changes and that my image captures are no longer up to date. As I am no longer traveling in India, I will not update the captures or the article.Please payattention to all messages posted on the site and all emails sent to you. In case of difficulty, please contact directly the IRCTC customer service (by email and if needed by Twitter).

More info about booking train tickets for tourists :

P/s : so everything I write below is no longer up to date

OLD VERSION (before July 2017)

To book train tickets in India, I advise you to go via Cleartrip, since the official IRCTC website is very complicated. The price difference is frankly not huge (1€), so make your life easier!

We also recommend that you first create an account on Cleartrip and then create the IRCTC account by following the steps below. If you do the opposite (i.e. create an IRCTC account and then create a Cleartrip account and synchronize the two accounts, you will have to enter a code that is very difficult to obtain twice).

Attention: All this must be done outside the IRCTC site maintenance period (i.e. daily between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Indian time)

Part 1: Create a Cleartrip & IRCTC account (old procedure)

  1. Create an account on Cleartrip
  2. Click on “Trains” on the menu on the left and search for a route. Click on “Check availability” and then “Book”
  3. A pop-up will open asking you to synchronize your Cleartrip account to the IRCTC account. You do not have an IRCTC account, so create an IRCTC account. When registering, enter a fake 10-digit mobile number that doesn’t start with 0 (they won’t be able to send you an SMS abroad anyway, so you can make up a number for yourself)
  4. You will receive 2 emails
    1. “Welcome to your Cleartrip account” by Cleartrip
    1. “SUCCESSFUL REGISTRATION of xxxx for IRCTC Booking” DO NOT CLICK on the link in the email, we will activate the account later. 2 infos to note (your id and your temporary password :

    1. Your IRCTC User id is xxxx The user id cannot be changed and hence we recommend that you store this email for your reference. => please note, you will need it


    1. The Email OTP is xxx => note, you will need it

  5. You will notice that another temporary password has been sent to your “mobile”. But since you don’t have an Indian phone, you don’t receive it. So you should write to [email protected]with a scan of your passport attached (and which is less than 1MB). Here is the email template you can use
    1. Mail subject : Account Activation: Mobile OTP for France
    1. Email
      Dear IRCTC,
      I managed to create an account on your website but I’m struggling to get the mobile OTP, as I’m living in France.please find attached a scan of my passport. Could you please send me the mobile activation code to : xxxx@xxxxxx
      Thanks a lot for your help!

      IRCTC ID: xxx
      First Name : xxx
      Surname : xxx
      Thank you and have a nice day!
  6. You will receive an automatic message indicating the ticket number assigned to your request
  7. If after a week you don’t receive anything, send a reminder by email or harass by Twitter (specifying the ticket number), it will go faster. Personally, I got my code in 1 day via Twitter while the two email reminders were completely ignored.
    Capturetwitterirctc
  8. Now that you have all the codes to activate your account, go to www.cleartrip.com/trains/irctc/account/activate to do so. Enter the IRCTC account ID and temporary email password found on the SUCCESSFUL REGISTRATION of xxxx for IRCTC Booking email. Then enter the temporary mobile password obtained via [email protected]
    Captureirctcactivation

Part Two: Buy Tickets

Before purchasing tickets, make sure you have your IRCTC username + the IRCTC password you entered when you created your account. This is important because even if you buy via Cleartrip, and the accounts have been synchronized, you will still be redirected to IRCTC at the end of your order, and without a password, all bets are off. To do this, go to www.irctc.co.in and try to log in to make sure you have the right password.

irctclogin

Return to Cleartrip, book your train. Be careful, you can only book one train at a time. If you have 4 trains to take, you will need to make four reservations and re-enter the passenger names and passport numbers.

I recommend, for night trips, the AC 2 (2nd class with air conditioning) or AC 3 (3rd class with air conditioning) in upper place (at the very top) so that you can lie down directly and sleep. If you are in the lower seat, you may have to wait until everyone decides to go to bed before you can lie down. Avoid “side lower” or “side upper” because the seats are smaller. For day trips and not too long trips, AC Chair Car can be a good option. If it’s not too hot, opt for the Sleeper class to travel like Indians.

Here you will find pictures of the different train classes.

Sometimes the class you choose simply does not exist on the date you choose. For example, I wanted the 1st class for Khajuraho – Varanasi but this isn’t possible so they offered me AC 3 Tier instead. So take a good look at the “Fare” column to be sure to travel in the class you have chosen.

Capturefare

At the time of payment, choose “Credit”.

And the rates in all this?

Cleartrip is a private company. So unlike IRCTC, it takes commissions for any reservation on its site
If IRCTC offers for Udaipur-Jaipur in 1st class Rs. 3350 all inclusive for 2 persons, Cleartrip charged us Rs. 3477 or 3.7% more. But all this is very acceptable that the price difference is 1.7€!
There are no pictures! Go through Cleartrip to make your life easier, since the IRCTC website is just incomprehensible (I almost booked hotels instead of trains because it was so badly screwed up).

charges

You will have the numbers of your seats the same day, online or on the paper list glued on your car, Indian trains are often late so allow some margin for your train travel! Have a nice trip!

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