There are numerous examples of cryptic error messages which are hard or even impossible to get a meaning out of, I encountered one such error while trying to book train tickets using Indian Railways online ticketing facility provided by irctc.co.in. The error message was "The Dates given were outside ARP", while not too cryptic the message was also not very much self-explanatory and leaves no clues on what ARP means here???

The simple logic of "demand and supply" is the reason behind poor Indian railway ticket booking experience, be it online or offline at the ticket window. Higher demand of tickets then availability is the reason customers experience long queues at ticket booking counters, and slow internet booking. To get your chances high for an online ticket booking specially under the "tatkal" ticket scheme, we had to be faster and smarter than others and rely on technology to get head using tricks like this and even this.

To offer an better tatkal ticket booking experience Indian Railway and IRCTC are constantly working on new facilities and capacity expansions, from July 10 the "tatkal" booking time will get changed to 10 AM (currently 8 AM) and no authorized agents will be allowed to book tickets in these two hours. The E-ticket handling capacity of the the online portal will also get increased to handle 5 lakh bookings per day from current 3.5 lakh. To further safeguard common users from tauts and "illegal ticket booking agents" the authorities will strictly monitor the bookings and may also do a verification call to verify userid, pnr, passenger mobile number and passenger details.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) provides an online railway ticket booking facility but thanks to the sheer traffic to this website the service is busy and unresponsive most of the time. Despite being the world's largest rail network, getting an Indian train-ticket is something not so easy, and we have shared tips and trick to make the experience most efficient for our readers like - better alternatives to IRCTC website, Rail inquiry by SMS, Auto PNR tracking and update by SMS and trick to get your tickets faster with better chances to grab tatkal quota.

While there are commercial software's like SoftValley Tatkal Reservation to get your tickets, here is something every user can do legally and without paying anything by accessing and booking via IRCTC website but using the alternative, faster way.

Considering how the overloaded world's biggest employer - "Indian Railways" handles the online information and reservation of railway tickets we have shared tricks to book tatkal tickets fast and ways to search Indian Railways using alternative portals.

It seems IRCTC is taking steps to enhance the overall ticketing experience for the end-user, the very first sign of this was evident when they emailed the "Jago Yatri Jago" initiative to educate the consumer by sending them the informational email as below containing some very useful tips to help the consumers.

Full email content below :

Just few hours ago Star News (India) was running a story showing how train-booking agents are utilizing automated software from a company named "SoftValley Travels Pvt. Ltd." to snatch off "Tatkal Quota Bookings" (Urgent Train Ticket Quota in Indian Railways) from common users, today we will be showing you how you can also replicate the exact trick used by that Tatkal Train Ticket Booking Software and get your confirmed tickets the smarter way without paying any extra charges to travel agents or buying that software.