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Indian trains often get fully-booked weeks in advance, so it's worth booking before you get to India if you have limited time or need to be on a particular train soon after your arrival. You have two options: You can book Indian train tickets online at www.irctc.co.in, which some people find really easy and others impossible. Or you can arrange all your trains, or even just one train journey, through the UK's IndRail pass agency, which is a bit more expensive but completely hassle-free. Buying train tickets online at http://www.irctc.co.in:

The best way for foreign visitors to buy Indian train tickets before they get to India is online at http://www.irctc.co.in. This is the official government-sponsored sales website for Indian Railways. Some people love it, but others struggle, so here are some tips for using this service:

Period of operation: The online booking service is not (at the time of writing) available 24 hours a day, but 05:00-23:30 Indian time, which is 23:30-18:00 GMT. The system can sometimes be overloaded with visitors, so if you have any problems or if it rejects your credit card, try again later. This may be why some people breeze through it and love it, while others struggle. It gets significantly less busy after about 18:00 Indian time (13:00 GMT).

Signing up: The first step is to go to http://www.irctc.co.inand sign up for a user name and password. This is a very straightforward process. It won't accept UK-length postcodes, so just use the first few digits.

Reservations for most long distance trains open 90 days before departure. Some short-distance inter-city trains open for bookings less than 90 days. To state the obvious, you can't buy tickets before reservations open!

Use tickets from the general quota (or if booking at short notice within 72 hours of departure, the taktal quota) as you cannot book tourist quota places online.

10 ticket limit: You can only buy a maximum of 10 tickets per calendar month using this website, so bear that in mind if you expect to book a whole series of trips through this system. A more complex itinerary requiring more than 10 journeys may be better booked using an IndRail pass, see below.

Ticket delivery: Tickets cannot be sent overseas or picked up at the station, but there are both 'e-ticket' and 'i-ticket' options.

The e-ticket option: This is the recommended option. You simply book online and print out your booking reference, then show it to the conductor on board the train along with your passport. It's easy, and avoids any problems with ticket delivery. http://www.irctc.co.in introduced this hassle-free ticketless option for travelling on the best Shatabdi and Rajdhani Express trains in 2005, then extended it to cover almost all long-distance express trains in 2006. A small charge is made for e-tickets, currently RS 25, about 35p. If you lose the printout you can still travel as long as you have your passport as ID, but there's an RS 50 fine.

The i-ticket option: You only need to use the i-ticket option if for some reason the e-ticket option isn't available for the train you want. i-tickets (i=internet) are sent by courier to any Indian address you specify (for example, the hotel where you will be staying) in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and other specified Indian cities. If you ask for them to be delivered to your hotel, the courier will need to see a letter authorising delivery if you are not there to sign for the tickets, so you will have to arrange this with the hotel. An email or fax to the hotel authorising them to take delivery is sufficient. To see which postcodes in which cities are covered by the courier service, select 'PIN codes covered' from the www.irctc.co.in home page. You will need to know the full address and postcode (which is called a PIN code in India) for your hotel. If these collection and delivery arrangements don't suit you, and for some reason you can't use the e-ticket option, it may be better to book through an IndRail pass agency using an IndRail pass as explained below.

Credit card payment: You pay securely by Visa, MasterCard or Amex credit card. It will offer you a list of Indian banks, but don't panic! It is not asking you which Indian credit card you have, but which Indian credit card merchant service you want to handle your transaction. It's been reported that the Citi Bank payment option (top right) works better than the others with overseas (non-Indian) debit cards, and Axis works best with non-Indian credit cards. Unlike some Indian budget airline websites, www.irctc.co.in does accept credit cards issued outside India, making it easy for tourists to book train travel this way. After payment, you will receive an email from Indian Railways with your booking details.

Some western banks are now so worried about fraud that they put a 'hold' on your credit card the moment any unusual foreign transaction goes through. If your credit card doesn't work, or if it worked to buy one ticket but won't work for a second ticket, try contacting your credit card company to confirm that you're making a legitimate transaction and ask them to unblock your card.

Feedback from people who have used this service has been very positive, but further feedback is always welcome.>

Buy tickets via an IndRail pass agency

The hassle-free way of booking an Indian train journey in advance from outside India, or indeed booking a complete itinerary by rail around India, is to buy an IndRail Pass from the official IndRail pass agency in your home country, complete with any train reservations you need. Even a single Indian train journey can be arranged using a ½-day pass for any journey lasting less than 12 hours for $26 (£16) in AC2 or $57 (£34) in AC1, or a 1-day pass for any journey lasting less than 24 hours, for $43 (£26) in AC2 or $95 (£56) in AC1. There are IndRail pass agencies in the UK, Australia, Germany, Finland, Malaysia, South Africa and some other other countries