How to Book a Train in India As Foreigner Without an Indian Bank Card

I recently started a Facebook group full of kickass people who love traveling in India or are planning a trip to India. One common problem kept getting asked about, one that doesn’t have an easy answer: people wanted to know how to book a train in India as a foreigner without an Indian bank card.

In India, when you try to pay online for things, websites will often decline foreign bank cards. That includes PayTM (kind of like PayPal), IRCTC (Indian Rails), Redbus, and websites to top up your SIM card. One reason for this is that the websites don’t want to pay the card fees which can be higher with international cards but in general India is slow to let anything foreign in. In India you’ll even find that things are so far behind that you’ll have to do wire transfers to pay for a hotel instead of just putting in your card details. I have always advised that you book your trains through Cleartrip and to do so, you do need to set up a IRCTC account through Cleartrip. It’s not…