News Brief
Arun Kumar Das
Nov 02, 2022, 10:41 AM | Updated 10:45 AM IST
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Promoting domestic tourism, the Railways has decided to run Bharat Gaurav Tourist Train for visiting the world famous Jagannath temple in Puri from the Capital on 8 November this year.
Besides the Jagannath temple as the major attraction, the Bharat Gaurav AC tourist train will also facilitate sightseeing of Konark, Bhubaneswar, Kashi, Baidyanath and Gaya as part of the tour package.
Beginning on 8 November, the special train will embark upon an eight days journey covering some of the prominent pilgrimage and heritage destinations of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha.
IRCTC, the tourism arm of the Indian Railways, will run Bharat Gaurav Tourist Train with the government's "Dekho Apna Desh” initiative to promote domestic tourism.
Coupled with a modern state-of-the-art AC rake, the tourist train will start from Delhi Safdarjung Railway station on 8 November and return on 15 November. Tourists will also have options to board/de-board the train at Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Tundla, Etawah, Kanpur and Lucknow stations in the tour.
The eight-day Bharat Gaurav tourist train tour has its first stop at Varanasi, the ancient holy city, where tourists will visit Kashi Vishwanath Jyotirlinga temple and the corridor along with the Ganga ghat and Arati.
After Varanasi, the train will move to Jasidih Railway station in Jharkhand and tourists will proceed to visit Baidyanath dham Jyotirlinga temple.
Further train will depart from Jashidih to Puri where a stay for two nights will be arranged for tourists in the hotels. While at Puri, tourists will visit Jagannath temple, Golden Puri beach, Sun temple at Konark and temples of Bhubaneswar.
After Puri, Gaya will be the last destination where the visit of Vishnupad temple will be covered in the tour.
This fully air-conditioned tourist train will comprise eleven third-AC coaches, one pantry car and two guard vans. Freshly cooked vegetarian meals will be served on board to the guests in their respective seats from the well equipped modern pantry car.
The train has also been fitted with an infotainment system for the entertainment of the passengers as well as for public announcements. From clean toilets to enhanced security features of CCTV cameras and security guards for each coach have also been provided for the tourists.
At a price range starting from Rs 28,560/- per person, the IRCTC tourist train will be an all inclusive tour package covering train journey in third-AC, night stay at AC hotels, all meals (VEG ONLY), all transfer and sight-seeing in buses, Travel Insurance and services of guide etc.
All necessary health precautionary measures will be taken care of and IRCTC will make efforts to provide a safe and memorable experience to the guests.
In order to make this package more attractive and affordable to a large population, IRCTC has tied up with Paytm and Razorpay payment gateways for providing EMI payment options for breaking the total payment in small amount EMIs.
Users can avail the EMI payment option for making payment in 3, 6, 9, 12, 18 or 24 month EMIs. These EMI payment options can be made through Debit/Credit Cards.
Arun Kumar Das is a senior journalist covering railways. He can be contacted at akdas2005@gmail.com.