The pandemic has hit the life of every individual. India’s luxury trains, viz., Royal Rajasthan on Wheels, Maharaja Express, Palace on Wheels, and Deccan Odyssey too tremendously got affected by this novel coronavirus and remained off the tracks during the pandemic time from 2019 until 2021.

It is pertinent to mention that Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation (RTDC) operates the famous Palace on Wheels and Rajasthan Royals on Wheels in collaboration with Indian Railways. Palace on Wheels takes 8 days to complete the journey in the sector of the Golden Triangle, i.e., Delhi-Agra-Jaipur.

In this vein, a senior official at RTDC said, “We are planning to restart the trains especially Palace on Wheels with a covid restricted travel advisory in the first week of Sept. with a sizeable number of guests as advance bookings have already been done. For the last two years, the trains were not operational. With restricted covid norms including a face mask, social distancing the rail department seeing the current scenario will now allow people in small groups of 30-35 in number,” he added.

The majority of tourists who travel on these trains are from foreign nations and due to rescheduling or cancellation of trains during the pandemic time the rail industry underwent a big financial or economical loss.

The official of RTDC further informed, “It was a bad phase as a big bulk booking done in the year 2019-2020 got cancelled by the foreign tourists owing to Covid-19.” Due to the pandemic, all 28 scheduled departures of Maharajas' Express, running from Delhi- different cities of Rajasthan to Mumbai have been cancelled from October 2021 to April 2022.

Now as the disastrous Covid-19 has almost come to an end, travel including air and rail is reviving with new guidelines, upgraded services, and trends.