Rand-friendly railway is a great way to explore India

Stephen McClarence rides the Kangra Valley Railway for a window on both lovely landscapes and locals’ lives

You can't complain about the ticket prices. A 160km trip on the Kangra Valley Railway, through some of northern India's loveliest landscapes, costs just 35 rupees - around R7.

The journey, winding past the Himalayan foothills, takes just short of 10 hours. But what's the hurry? This is a perfect example of slow travel at its - well - slowest.

This isn't one of the high-profile hill railways.

For every thousand tourists who take the celebrated "Toy Train" up to Shimla, hardly a handful do the narrow-gauge Kangra service, around 112km further north.

Tipped for Unesco world heritage status, it climbs to almost 1,220m, with 33 scheduled station stops. It offers spectacular views of the snow-capped Dhauladhar range and the valley itself - "a picture of rural loveliness and repose," as a colonial official wrote a century ago.

Don't expect a tourist train, says Ashok Kumar, as he drives my wife Clare and me through a misty early morning to Pathankot, the railway junction where the Kangra line, completed in 1929, starts its long haul east to the town of Joginder Nagar.

"It's a very simple train," says Ashok. "Local people travel on it." Through the mist, we can just about make out shawl-swathed men on bicycles, lorries with bulging loads of hay, and shutters being rattled up for the day at dhabas - cheap roadside restaurants.

At the station, a few dozen passengers are waiting for the train. People sleep on the platform, vague shapes under thick blankets. A man sits on a bench as a barber shaves him.

The walls of the Reservations Room are dotted with notices: "Cleanliness is our goal . And you have an important role." "It's about your health and hygiene. So help us keep trains and stations clean." Indian Railways probably has a Directorate of Rhyming Homilies churning this stuff out.

We pay 25 rupees (R5) each at the ticket office. We're only doing the first half of the journey, as far as Kangra, a small town best known for its fort. It's 96km taking just under five hours. You can't buy tickets in advance or reserve seats, so you have to hope the train won't be packed. Best avoid travelling during big local cricket fixtures.

The train pulls in: a diesel engine like an elongated industrial boiler and half-a-dozen boxy, blue-and-yellow, second-class carriages. We bag two seats. They're no frills, bus-like, only lightly padded but not uncomfortable.

At the far end of the train are two small first-class compartments, with tickets at 180 rupees (R36) for the full journey. They're marginally plusher than second class, but we'd probably be on our own and Indian rail travel is all about sociability.

Across the aisle from us in second class are Rajesh Banty, a businessman with slicked-back hair, and his wife Kanchen Pooja. They're headed home with the water purifier they've just bought. Rajesh opens a bag of Uncle Chipps and offers us some.

Along from a disconsolate-looking group of women labourers, half-a-dozen excitable young men have stopped taking selfies and are scrambling for seats and luggage space. There's always room for one more in India.

The carriage gradually fills up, until it's standing-room only. Numbers thin out later, though, as most passengers travel just a few stops. A portly woman sits down next to Clare and edges her along the seat. A white-haired woman gets on and sings a Hindi song; people give her money. Our fellow passengers stare at us, then lose interest.

Just after 10am, there's a shriek from the engine and Kumar, out on the platform, waves us off. I get talking to VK Babber, a clothes retailer on his way home after a trade trip to Delhi. I tell him we're going to Kangra. "In Jawalamukhi, two stations before, local fish is very good," he says.

We trundle past low, forested hills, orange groves, tea gardens, conical haystacks, cow pats left to dry in the sun for fuel, children sitting cross-legged in school playgrounds for their lessons. It's a microcosm of everyday rural India, endlessly interesting.

The train's steady dum-dum-di-dum rhythm lulls us into a near-meditative state. Some passengers talk. Most gaze out of the window, in their own zone.

Eventually we reach the first of the line's two tunnels, plunging us into darkness, with much screaming and whistling from the young men. The track also crosses an astonishing 970 bridges. Building one of them, a railway report noted, was "a titanic struggle between the forces of nature and the ingenuity of science".

Every few stations, men climb on with trays of snacks. Chai-wallahs with chrome teapots pass cups through the windows. After a few hours, the uplands open out: dense forests, broad rivers, deep gorges, plateaus with grazing cattle. Across the aisle, Kanchen Pooja is sharing family photographs with a woman who sat down next to her five minutes ago.

We arrive at Kangra at 3.30pm, half an hour late but nicely timed for a cloudburst of screeching parakeets. It's a clean and peaceful station with two substantial trees growing through its curving platform.

Kumar is waiting for us. He drove ahead and has been here for hours. "Mountains are there," he points into the mist.

We'll see them the next morning, glistening icy white, but for the moment we watch the train pull out for its final 64km run to Joginder Nagar. A mere five hours ahead.

INDIA'S RAILWAYS TO THE HILLS

Nilgiri Mountain Railway

Down in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the Nilgiri line (named after the area's Nilgiri Hills and finished in 1908) takes around five hours to cover the 48km between the mainline station of Mettupalayam and Udhagamandalam, the hill station more commonly known as Ooty.

It climbs 2km, with the air getting fresher along the way. At longer stops, passengers get off to look at nearby waterfalls. It has the atmosphere of a great day out.

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Kalka-Shimla Railway

The 96km "Toy Train" journey up to the hill station of Shimla from Kalka (reached by express train from Delhi) generally takes around five hours.

Opened in 1903 and now a popular holiday jaunt for Indian families, it's a slow switchback ride with hundreds of bridges and viaducts, spectacular views and sheer drops alongside the track. Shimla is revealed ahead, clinging to vertiginous slopes with mountains behind it.

Like the other hill railways mentioned here, the line has Unesco world heritage status.

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway

Arguably the best-known of the hill railways, this 80km line, dating back to 1880, isn't the quickest way to reach Darjeeling but it's the most interesting.

If you can't spare seven twisting, turning, double-looping hours for the full journey from New Jalpaiguri down on the plains, climbing from 97m to 2km, there's a two-hour "taster" run between Darjeeling and Kurseong.

The train, sometimes steam-hauled, chugs along village streets, close enough to greengrocers' stalls for you to help yourself to tomatoes.- The Sunday Telegraph