{"id":15443,"date":"2017-03-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2017\/03\/23\/government-of-india-promotes-pilgrim-trains\/"},"modified":"2017-03-23T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T12:00:00","slug":"government-of-india-promotes-pilgrim-trains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2017\/03\/23\/government-of-india-promotes-pilgrim-trains\/","title":{"rendered":"Government of India Promotes &#8220;Pilgrim Trains&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pib.nic.in\/newsite\/PrintRelease.aspx\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>INDIA, March 22, 2017 (Press Information Bureau): Aastha Circuit trains covering various religious places commenced operation on March 17, 2017. They offer all-inclusive tour packages with different itineraries of varying duration, decided by Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd. Tours are announced and booked through IRCTC tourism portal www.irctctourism.com. The first 6 nights\/7 days itinerary started from Guwahati on February 17, 2017 covered Kolkata, Puri and Bhubaneswar and the second 10 nights\/11 days itinerary, which started from Darbhanga on March 20, 2017, plans to cover Bhubaneswar, Tirupati, Kanyakumari, Trivandrum, Rameshwaram and Madurai, with several boarding\/de-boarding points enroute. <\/p>\n<p>The Astha Special Tourist Train &#8220;West India &#8211; Jyotirlinga Special Tour&#8221; includes an 8 night\/9 day itinerary for a cost of US$127 in a second class sleeper coach with stops in Dwarka, Mahakaleshwar, Nageshwar, Omkareshwar and Somnath.<\/p>\n<p>The package includes:<br \/>Hall accommodation at places of night stay\/morning freshening up.<br \/>Pure vegetarian meals.<br \/>Non AC Tourist buses for visiting sightseeing spots.<br \/>Tour escorts for announcements and information.<br \/>Security arrangements for each coach.<br \/>An IRCTC Official on train as train Superintendent.<\/p>\n<p>For more detailed information and a list of scheduled tours, see:<br \/>https:\/\/www.irctctourism.com\/cgi-bin\/dev1.dll\/irctc\/booking\/vatplanner.do?screen=fromCity&#038;Submit=Search&#038;frompackage=true&#038;cityName=0&#038;bhTirth=&#038;packageCategory=AASTHA&#038;submitClicks=0&#038;categoryName=AASTHA&#038;destinationCity=&#038;packageCity=0<\/p>\n<p>HPI Note: Hinduism Today is planning a story on these train pilgrimages, and if you&#8217;ve been on one, we&#8217;d like to hear from you. Contact ar@hindu.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source INDIA, March 22, 2017 (Press Information Bureau): Aastha Circuit trains covering various religious places commenced operation on March 17,,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}