Indian Railways, with a history of almost two centuries and a network of tens of thousands of kilometres, is often touted as the lifeline of the country. This giant railway network has connected some of the most far apart places in the country. The farthest that the Indian Railways has bridged through a single route is 4,247 kilometres.
We are talking about the longest train route in the country and this route is marked on the network as Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari. This huge distance between a station that lies in the north-east of India to a station that lies in the southern-most point of the country is covered by the Vivek Express.
The Vivek Express, running from Dibrugarh in Assam to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, currently holds the title of the longest train route in the country, both in terms of distance and time. The train, along its way, crosses a total of nine states. With 58 stops, the train goes through Assam, Nagaland, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.
The announcement of the Vivek Express was made in 2011 during the presentation of the railway budget for 2011-12 by Mamata Banerjee, the then Railway Minister of India. The train route was established to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda.
Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari was one of the four routes that were carved out on the Indian map under the Vivek Express initiation. Other routes of the Vivek Express are Okha, Gujarat to Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu; Bandra, Mumbai to Katra, Jammu; Howrah, West Bengal to Mangaluru, Karnataka.
Although the longest in the country, the Vivek Express is still far behind than the world’s longest train route. A train journey that takes six days and measures a total of 9,250 kilometres (almost double the distance covered by Vivek Express) is the Trans-Siberian Railway that connects Moscow and Vladivostok. The Russian rail route connects the western part of the country to the far eastern parts. The train crosses several time zones along its journey.
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