There is a narrow-gauge railway running the length of this valley, built a century ago to serve the tea estates, and it is still the most pleasant way to arrive anywhere in Himachal.
It is slow. That is the entire point, and it is why people who have done it once plan their next trip around doing it again.
What is the Kangra Valley Railway?
A two-foot-six-inch narrow-gauge line from Pathankot in Punjab to Jogindernagar in Himachal, opened in the enthusiastic days of the 1920s to get tea out of the Palampur gardens and down to the plains.
It runs the whole width of the Kangra valley with the Dhauladhar on one side for most of it. No tunnels to speak of, a lot of bridges, and the track sits low enough that you are looking at villages and terraced fields rather than down from a viaduct at them. Kangra Mandir is the station for Kangra town and the nearest one to us.
People call it a toy train, which undersells it — this is not a short tourist ride like the Shimla or Darjeeling lines. It is a working railway that happens to go through some of the best scenery in north India.
Is it worth doing?
Yes, with one honest condition: only if you are not in a hurry.
It is slower than the road. Considerably. A car covers the same ground in a fraction of the time, and if your trip is three days long, spending most of one of them on a train is a real trade.
Do it if:
- The journey is part of the holiday rather than the cost of it
- You are coming from the Pathankot side anyway
- You like trains, or you are travelling with somebody small who does
- You want the valley at eye level instead of through a windscreen
Skip it if you have two days and a list. Two days is a car trip.
What the ride is like
Wooden-framed windows that open properly, which is most of it. You can put your arm out. Nobody minds.
The carriages are basic and that is fine — there is usually a first class that is mostly a slightly emptier version of the rest. Chai comes through, and at the bigger halts you can get down for a few minutes because nothing about this railway is in a rush.
The stretch east of Kangra towards Palampur and Baijnath is the good one: the tea gardens start, the range comes out from behind the near hills, and for a while the line runs along a shelf with the whole valley below it.
The practical bit: services and timings on this line change, and they change more than a mainline does. Check the current timetable close to your date rather than trusting anything written a year ago — including this. Ask us the week you travel and we will look at what is actually running.
Getting off at Kangra
Kangra Mandir is the station for the town and the temple, and it is the stop for us. Come out of the station and it is a short run up the hill.
Tell us your train and roughly when it gets in. This is a small place, somebody picks up the phone, and arriving by rail is easy to arrange around — which is not always true of the hotels up in Dharamshala, where you are also adding a climb at the end of an already slow day.
If you are flying instead, Gaggal is the valley's airport and the nearest one to us by some distance. And the road from Pathankot, Dharamshala or Palampur is ordinary in every season — what the drive up is actually like, if that is how you are coming, and getting here, in detail.
Doing it as a day out instead
You do not have to arrive by train to ride it. A good half-day: drive or take a short hop to a station down the line, ride one leg east through the tea gardens, and be collected at the other end.
It works particularly well combined with Baijnath and Palampur, since the train goes past both and the road follows it.
When to ride it
Anytime it is running, but the windows matter here more than usual, and open windows mean weather.
- October and November — the clearest air of the year, and the range visible the whole way. The best of it.
- March to May — green, warm, easy.
- Monsoon — extraordinary to look at, and the season most likely to disrupt a hill railway. Have a road plan as well.
- Winter — clear and very cold with the windows open. Take more than you think.
The month-by-month guide has the rest.
Where to sleep at the end of it
Here, if you like — a room is ₹999 a night to start, or ₹1,699 with air conditioning, on a hillside a short run from Kangra Mandir with a pool in the middle of it.
Message us with your train and your dates. Somebody will answer the same day, and if you are arriving late because the railway has done what the railway does, that is entirely fine. Say so and the room will be held.