Today morning I was doing some reservations for my train journey and it took me back in time when some of these things were so manual and cumbersome. Now Since the last 20 years or so the online booking system is available. But prior to that it was all manual. So whenever I had to travel by train and wanted to book the ticket, I had to go to the railway station, stand in a queue and get the tickets. This is for the outstation travels.

The reservations would start 2 months in advance from the travel date and there were very limited trains for majorly all the destinations within India. Some of them were such hot cakes that the reservation had to be done on day 1 of the booking opening itself else confirmed booking would not be possible. During holidays if we had travels planned then I had to reach the station by 7 a.m. and stand in the queue. If I would go later in the day then the queue would be extremely long and it would take double the time, not only that then there was no guarantee of getting confirmed tickets. The booking counters would open up at 8 a.m. and on getting the confirmed ticket it would be such a relief. It was the main exercise of the travel.

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It was such a cumbersome process then, but now it's simplified so much. First of all the bookings can be done online, so there is no need to travel to the station. From the portal booking can be done 24x7, in the manual bookings there were fixed hours of 8 to 7 I think, I do not even remember the closing timings very well now. Also now there are many trains for each sector so confirmation probability is much higher then what it used to be before.

Also when the online system was introduced I was so reluctant of booking online and it took me some years to get on to it. For some years I still preferred going physically to the station and buying the tickets. It was new then and there were many bugs in the system so I did not want to take chances. Also I avoided booking it through agents, which was a common system then, because agents had their own fees and in those days I was on a tight budget and would want to save every single penny from wherever I can. In bargain there was a physical activity that I had to do, which was ok for me then. But now I cannot imagine doing all of that. Gradually when I started booking online, I realized how convenient it was. Because in manual booking if there was any change also cancellation to be done, then for that also I had to go to the station. With my full time job it was a task.

So many systems have upgraded from the past, it's a world of online and it's convenient using these systems. Though sometimes I feel all these old ways had it's own charm. Now things happen so fast that sometimes you are not even absorbed in the experience of it.

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