Booking railway retiring rooms online and offline tip

You can now book a cheap railway retiring room online. Here is a step by step guide.

Why railway retiring room? First of all its safe, if you are traveling to unknown city and don't know much about hotels and locations railway stations are usually safe because there's police CCTVs and lot of crowd.

Just in case if you are thinking, these retiring rooms are usually located on first or second floor and there's a watch man sitting outside these rooms. So that's additional security.

Another big reason why i book retiring rooms rather than going into hotels is because its very cheap! And usually clean, sometimes you may face a little issue but in general its perfect!

How much does it cost?
Depending upon the kind of room and station size u can expect to pay somewhere between

• Rs 50 - 100      - normal dormitory (a big hall with lot of beds 10-15 and shared toilet)
• Rs 100 - 150    - Air conditioned dormitory
• 300-500 - double bed single non-AC room, attach toilet
• 600-1000 - Double bed AC room attach toilet

This is much cheaper than same standard hotel, especially in larger  cities.

A complete list of details with online booking details available on official railway website here:
http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/view_section.jsp?lang=0&id=0,2,279





Some of the cities that have retiring rooms available for online booking are:
Ahmedabad
Allahabad
Amritsar
Amethi
Bandra Terminus
Bengaluru (SBC)
Bhopal
Bhubneshwar
Chennai Central
Chennai Egmore
Gulbarga
Haridwar
Habibganj
Howrah
Jabalpur
Jammu Tawi
Kalyan
Kota
Central Railway Mumbai
Lucknow
Madurai
Miraj
Mumbai Central
Mumbai CSTM
Nagpur
Nasik
New Delhi
Pune
Puri
Rajkot
Rameshwaram
Rae-Bareli
Sawaimadhopur
Secunderabad
Shimla
Solapur
Satna
Thane
Vadodara
Varanasi Jn
Vishakhapattnam


Steps to book online:

1. First of all Book a ticket online or offline. You must have PNR of confirmed ticket.
2. Go to www.irctctourism.com and click on accomodation and fill your PNR number and click search
   
   
3. Then you can choose  the room type and dates
   
4. Make the payment online. And u will get booking number. 

Note:
- Not all railway stations offer online booking facilities, gradually it should cover more cities.

- In order to reserve a room you should have a booked ticket of same station.
- This service is only for people who are traveling through railway.
- However, there is no official way to check if you really travelled.
- You cannot book a ticket if you don't have a PNR of confirmed ticket.


How to book rooms offline
At any railway station just walk to any inquiry counter and it will give you details about the room availability. You must however still have a booked ticket where source or destination of the journey is that station. 

This image: here u can go and ask for available retiring rooms.

• Check in time is 8 0 click in the morning.
• Room booking starts at 8 o clock in the morning and available till 8 o clock in the night.