6 Vande Bharat Train Routes Worth Booking for Scenic Views and Not Just for the Speed

The Vande Bharat on the Howrah-New Jalpaiguri corridor covers roughly 564 kilometres, and for most of the journey north of Malda, the train moves through a Bengal that most passengers never see from the road. Paddy fields give way to jute stretches, then the land starts to lift. By the time the train crosses into the Dooars, the vegetation thickens visibly. Tea gardens run in tight rows on either side of the track through the stretch approaching Jalpaiguri. On a clear morning, the Himalayan foothills appear at the northern horizon well before the train reaches New Jalpaiguri station. Book a window seat on the left side if you are travelling northward.

The Konkan Railway route is one of the most engineered rail corridors in India: 92 tunnels, 2,000 bridges, and a coastline that the train dips in and out of between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. The Vande Bharat on this route does not slow down for the scenery, which means the tunnel exits are sudden and the light changes fast. The stretch between Ratnagiri and Kudal is the one to stay awake for. Waterfalls drop from laterite cliffs during and after the monsoon. The Savitri River bridge offers a brief, wide view of the estuary before the train dives back into the hills. Sit on the right side heading south from Mumbai.

The Delhi-Katra Vande Bharat runs to the base of the Vaishno Devi hills, and the first half of the journey through Haryana is flat enough that passengers tend to stop looking. That is a mistake. After Pathankot, the Shivalik foothills begin in earnest. The Ravi and Ujh rivers appear briefly as the track curves through Jammu's outer districts. The hills here are not the dramatic snow-capped kind, they are dry, scrubby, and deeply folded, with a quality of light in the late afternoon that makes the ridgelines look painted. The last 80 kilometres into Katra run through narrow valleys where the train slows, and that is the stretch worth watching.

The Vande Bharat between Chennai and Coimbatore follows the Salem corridor, and the payoff is gradual. The plains around Katpadi and Salem are agricultural and flat. Then the track begins its approach toward the Nilgiri foothills, and the landscape changes register entirely. The Mettur reservoir appears briefly on the right if you are travelling west, its water level shifting dramatically with the season. The hills around Erode and the stretch into Coimbatore through the forest buffer near Walayar are where the route earns its scenery credentials. Early morning departures from Chennai mean you arrive at the foothills in good light.

This route does not get discussed as a scenic one, which is part of why it belongs on this list. The Vande Bharat from Secunderabad to Tirupati passes through the Eastern Ghats in a way that road travel on this corridor does not replicate. The stretch through Nalgonda district is dry Deccan plateau, but after Miryalaguda the terrain shifts. Forest corridors appear near the Nagarjunasagar fringes. Closer to Tirupati, the Seshachalam hills form the backdrop and the train descends through a landscape of granite boulders and scrub forest. Pilgrims on this route almost universally look at their phones. The window is yours.

The Delhi-Varanasi Vande Bharat was among the first routes the train ran, and the scenery is not dramatic in the mountain-and-coast sense. What it offers is different: the Ganga plains at full stretch. The Yamuna appears early, near Mathura, and the quality of the light over the river on a winter morning is the kind of thing that painters have been chasing for centuries. The track passes through Allahabad, where the Ganga and Yamuna converge at the Sangam. The approach into Varanasi in the evening, when the light turns amber over the river plain and the first temple spires appear on the horizon, is the route's quiet reward. Speed is what the train is sold on. That last hour into Varanasi is where it earns something else.

The Vande Bharat's design is built around cutting travel time, and that is the right pitch for most passengers. But the routes above share a quality that timetables do not capture: the scenery changes faster than it would from a bus or car, which means the train's speed becomes an asset for looking rather than an obstacle to it. A window seat on any of these six corridors is a different kind of ticket.