Vande Bharat Express Train Routes, Timings & Travel Guide

Most used Vande Bharat tools

• Vande Bharat Trains Between Stations

  Every Vande Bharat between two stops, with timings and distance.

  Find trains

• Vande Bharat Train Time Table

  Every stop, arrival and departure by train number.

  See time table

• Vande Bharat Fare Calculator

  CC and EC price for your group, with or without food.

  Calculate fare

• Vande Bharat Refund Calculator

  How much you get back when you cancel.

  Calculate refund

• Vande Bharat Tatkal Booking Time

  Tatkal date and time for your train, with countdown.

  Start countdown

• Vande Bharat Booking Date Calculator

  When booking opens: 60 days before at 08:00.

  Find booking date

See all 16 Vande Bharat tools

Search above by city, station code or train number. Typing “Mumbai Goa”, “Kolkata” or “22436” works, and so do intermediate stops such as “Bhubaneswar” or “Surat”.

Quick links: Ticket price · Seat map · Time table by train number · Refund calculator · Tatkal time · All tools · Check running status

Vande Bharat Express at a glance

Counts are from the Ministry of Railways list of July 2026 plus the two Sleeper routes that started in November 2026. Fares are from IRCTC’s fare enquiry on 11 November 2026.

Popular Vande Bharat train routes

These are the most searched Vande Bharat Express routes. Each has its own guide with the full stop list in both directions, fares with and without meals, and boarding tips.

CC fares are for one adult over the full route, with a meal. Every train in this table also runs in the opposite direction; the route guides show both.

Most Vande Bharat trains follow the same pattern: out from one city in the morning and back in the afternoon, six days a week, with one day off that differs by train. That makes many of them good for a same-day return trip. Try the same-day return planner, which found, for example, 3 hours 15 minutes in Ahmedabad on a Mumbai day trip with 20901 and 20902.

See all 84 Vande Bharat routes by state →

Vande Bharat trains from your city

Vande Bharat routes are spread across the country, but a few cities have several. Counting routes that start or end there:

• Delhi: 14 routes, from five different stations: New Delhi (6 routes), Hazrat Nizamuddin (2), Anand Vihar Terminal (2), Delhi Jn, also called Old Delhi (2), and Delhi Cantt (2). New Delhi has both Varanasi Chair Car pairs and the overnight Sleeper. See Delhi – Varanasi and the route list.
• Kolkata: 8 routes, all from Howrah (HWH). To Puri, New Jalpaiguri, Patna, Ranchi, Gaya, Jamalpur, Rourkela and the Kamakhya Sleeper. No Vande Bharat uses Sealdah. See trains from Howrah.
• Bengaluru: 8 routes, from four stations: KSR Bengaluru (3), Bengaluru Cantonment (2), SMVT Bengaluru (2) and Yesvantpur (1). Check your station before you leave; they are far apart.
• Mumbai: 7 routes. Trains to Gujarat start at Mumbai Central; trains to Goa, Shirdi, Solapur, Nanded and Bengaluru start at Mumbai CSMT. See trains from Mumbai.
• Chennai: 6 routes, from Chennai Central (MAS) and Chennai Egmore (MS). Tamil Nadu has 8 Vande Bharat routes in all. See Tamil Nadu.

Always check the actual station. A city search finds every Vande Bharat that serves the city, but the train only uses its own station. “Goa” means Madgaon (MAO), “Kolkata” means Howrah (HWH) and “Varanasi” means Varanasi Jn (BSB), not Banaras.

Vande Bharat Sleeper trains

The Vande Bharat Sleeper is the overnight version, with berths instead of seats. Three run as of November 2026:

The Sleeper has its own rules, and they are stricter than the Chair Car’s:

• Confirmed tickets under the rules: no RAC and no Tatkal. (IRCTC did show waiting-list numbers on 27422 in November 2026, so check IRCTC for your date.)
• Food is included in the fare, which is set per kilometre: ₹2.40 per km in 3A, up to about ₹3.80 in 1A, plus GST. New Delhi to Varanasi costs ₹1,915 in 3A, ₹2,470 in 2A and ₹3,030 in 1A.
• Minimum 400 km: every ticket is charged for at least 400 km.
• Cancellation: 25% of the fare is always deducted, and nothing is refunded in the last 8 hours.

Read the Vande Bharat Sleeper guide, or price any stretch with the Sleeper fare calculator.

Vande Bharat ticket price

A Vande Bharat Chair Car ticket is the base fare plus a reservation charge, a superfast charge, GST and, if you choose it, a meal. Here is IRCTC’s breakdown for Howrah to Puri in CC: base fare ₹983, reservation ₹40, superfast ₹45, GST ₹54 and meal ₹363, a total of ₹1,485. Choosing No Food brings it down to ₹1,122.

Three things are worth knowing about Vande Bharat fares:

1. There is no dynamic fare. The Ministry of Railways has said it has no plan to bring dynamic pricing to Vande Bharat, and IRCTC showed ₹0 dynamic fare on every train we checked. The price is the same whether you book early or late.
2. The base fare is higher than Shatabdi, about 1.4 times in CC. Yet on Howrah–Puri the Shatabdi’s own dynamic fare made it cost ₹1,410 against ₹1,485 for Vande Bharat, which is over an hour faster. See Vande Bharat vs Shatabdi.
3. The meal is a big part of the price: ₹156 to ₹433 per person depending on the train and class.

Work out your own fare with the Vande Bharat fare calculator, or read how Vande Bharat ticket prices work.

CC vs EC: which class to book

Vande Bharat Chair Car trains have two classes:

• CC (AC Chair Car): the standard class. Seats are in rows of five (3+2), and a normal coach has 78 seats. The two driving coaches at the ends of the train have 44. On current trains the seats are royal blue.
• EC (Executive Chair Car): the premium class. Wider seats in rows of four (2+2), no middle seat, and seats that rotate to face the direction of travel. An EC coach has 52 seats.

EC costs about 1.8 to 1.9 times the CC fare. When we checked on 11 November 2026, EC waiting lists were much shorter than CC on the trains we checked (Mumbai–Goa EC was already closed for one date), so EC is worth checking when CC is full. A train has 8, 16 or 20 coaches, with one or two EC coaches.

No official seat-numbering diagram exists for Vande Bharat coaches, so a window seat can never be guaranteed. See the Vande Bharat seat map and the full CC vs EC comparison.

How to book a Vande Bharat ticket

Vande Bharat tickets are booked on IRCTC like any other reserved train:

1. Find your train and date. Use the search above or the trains between stations tool, and check it runs that day with the running days checker.
2. Book when booking opens: 60 days before the journey, at 08:00 IST. The booking date calculator gives the exact date.
3. On IRCTC, enter your stations and date, pick CC or EC on the Vande Bharat, and add passengers.
4. Choose a meal or No Food, then review and pay.

Popular Vande Bharat trains fill up early. On 11 November 2026, trains just two to four days away had CC waiting lists of 50 to 150 on Howrah–Puri, Mumbai–Goa, Mumbai–Ahmedabad and Delhi–Varanasi. If you miss general booking, Tatkal opens at 10:00 IST the day before for CC and EC, and costs about ₹236 extra in CC and ₹525 in EC on a full-length trip.

Read the step-by-step booking guide, the Tatkal guide and the waiting list guide.

Cancellation and refund rules

A waitlisted Chair Car ticket costs only ₹60 clerkage to cancel, and if it is still waitlisted when the chart is made it is cancelled and refunded automatically. A confirmed Tatkal ticket gets no refund. If the railway cancels your train, you get a full refund.

Before you cancel, check whether you can change the boarding station instead: it can be done once, online, up to about 30 minutes before departure. An e-ticket’s date cannot be changed. Read the refund rules and the ticket change guide, or use the refund calculator and the cancellation deadline tool to see the exact clock times for your train.

Food on Vande Bharat

On Chair Car trains the meal is optional. You choose it or No Food when booking, and the price is added to the fare. Changed your mind? Add a meal later on IRCTC under Booked Ticket History → Opt Meal, or buy ready-to-eat food on board until 9 pm. IRCTC publishes the menu for each train. On Sleeper trains, food is included. See the food guide and the food cost calculator.

Fastest Vande Bharat trains

Ranked by average scheduled speed over the whole journey, stops included, among the 52 Vande Bharat trains we track:

Average speed is well below the 160 km/h top speed because it includes stops, slower sections and station approaches. See the full speed ranking and the fastest routes guide.

On the day of travel

• Check your PNR the evening before. Morning trains get their chart by 20:00 the night before; later trains about 10 hours before departure. The chart time tool gives the exact time.
• Check live running status on NTES before you leave home. Platform numbers are announced on the day.
• Find your coach: CC coaches are C1, C2 and so on; EC coaches are E1 and E2.
• Carry the ID of a passenger on the ticket, and keep your e-ticket SMS or PDF ready.

Read the PNR and running status guide.

Free Vande Bharat tools

We built 16 free tools on the same checked timetables and fares:

• Plan: trains between stations, time table, running days, same-day return planner, distance, speed ranking
• Book: booking date, Tatkal time, Tatkal charge, chart time
• Pay: fare calculator, Sleeper fare, food cost
• Cancel: refund calculator, cancellation deadline
• Travel: luggage tag maker

Vande Bharat Express FAQs

How many Vande Bharat trains are there in India? 84 routes as of November 2026: 81 Chair Car and 3 Sleeper. That is 168 train services, counting each direction separately. The Ministry of Railways reported 81 Chair Car pairs on 23 July 2026; the Delhi–Varanasi and Mumbai–Bengaluru Sleepers started in November 2026.

Which was the first Vande Bharat Express? New Delhi to Varanasi. The first Vande Bharat Express, built by ICF Chennai in 18 months, was flagged off on 15 February 2019 on this route, now run as 22435/22436 alongside a second Chair Car pair and an overnight Sleeper. Source: PIB · Vande Bharat history

Is Vande Bharat running every day? Most Vande Bharat trains run six days a week, and the day off differs by train. Check with the running days checker.

What is the ticket price of Vande Bharat Express? About ₹1,385 to ₹1,835 in CC and ₹2,505 to ₹3,385 in EC for a full journey of 490 to 770 km, including a meal. Choosing No Food is cheaper.

Is food included in the Vande Bharat ticket? On Chair Car trains only if you choose a meal while booking. On Sleeper trains food is included in the fare.

Is there Tatkal on Vande Bharat? Yes, in CC and EC on Chair Car trains, opening at 10:00 IST the day before. There is no Tatkal on the Vande Bharat Sleeper.

Is Vande Bharat 2 seater or 3 seater? Both. CC has 3 seats on one side of the aisle and 2 on the other. EC has 2 on each side.

How fast is the Vande Bharat train? Designed for 180 km/h and operated at up to 160 km/h where the track allows. The fastest average speed among the trains we track is 98.7 km/h, on Mumbai–Goa.

Is there a senior citizen concession on Vande Bharat? No. There is no fare concession on Vande Bharat trains. The Sleeper gives lower berths automatically, where available, to men aged 60+ and women aged 45+. See concessions and quotas.

Can I cancel a Vande Bharat ticket and get a refund? Yes. On Chair Car, cancelling more than 72 hours before costs ₹180 in CC or ₹240 in EC; closer to departure you lose more. The Sleeper always deducts at least 25%. Use the refund calculator.

How we check this guide

This is an independent guide, not Indian Railways or IRCTC. Every timetable here is checked against at least two timetable sources, and every fare comes from IRCTC’s own fare enquiry. Rules come from Railway Board circulars and Ministry of Railways statements, and each page shows when it was last checked. Train counts and speeds are from the Ministry of Railways via PIB. For live status, availability and booking, always use NTES and IRCTC. Read our editorial policy, see recent updates, and report a correction if you spot one.