Jaynagar to Janakpur

Nepal has one passenger railway. It runs for 51 kilometres across the Terai, the flat farmed strip along the Indian border, from Jaynagar in Bihar through Janakpur to Bhangaha — and it is nothing like the country in the postcards. There is no gradient worth the name and no mountain in the frame; there are paddy fields, level crossings, brick kilns and, three times a day each way, a five-car diesel railcar painted crimson and blue with NEPAL RAILWAY across its nose. Jaynagar to Janakpur takes an hour and a quarter and costs 70 rupees in general class, on a fare table the operator has not changed since 2023.

What makes it worth the day is where it goes. Janakpur is revered as the birthplace of Sita, and its Janaki Mandir draws pilgrims from across Nepal and India; the railway was built to carry timber out in 1937, ended up carrying pilgrims and traders instead, and has done so — with a gap — ever since. It closed in January 2014, was regauged from 762 mm to Indian broad gauge with a grant from India, and reopened to Kurtha in April 2022 and to Bhangaha in July 2023.

One thing to settle before you plan around it. Under the operating procedure agreed by Nepal and India, third-country nationals may ride this railway inside Nepal but may not cross the border on it. If you are neither Indian nor Nepali, the train is yours from Janakpur northward and southward to the frontier station — not into Bihar.

The train that does the work is a five-car diesel-electric multiple unit — a railcar, not a locomotive and coaches. Two sets were built at the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai and supplied through Konkan Railway, which still provides the technical staff; each has 1,600 horsepower, one air-conditioned coach and general seating in the rest, and each is painted in the crimson and blue of Nepal's flag. The two units carry the numbers DPC 1901 and DPC 1902, and between them they are the entire national passenger fleet.

From Jaynagar, the Indian railhead in Madhubani district, the line runs north across the plain. Inarwa, three kilometres on, is the first station in Nepal and the point where the customs and immigration formalities happen. Then Khajuri, Mahinathpur, Baidehi and Parbaha — low platforms among paddy, sugar cane and mango groves, with cycle rickshaws waiting at the ends — and at kilometre 28, an hour and a quarter out, Janakpur.

Janakpur, and what happens on the platform

Janakpur is the reason the train is full. It is the largest city of Madhesh Province, the centre of Maithili language and culture, and one of the great pilgrimage towns of the subcontinent: the Janaki Mandir stands twenty minutes' walk from the station, and at Vivaha Panchami in November or December the trains arrive loaded. Most services terminate here and turn back for India. Between them they take pilgrims one way and traders the other, and the platform empties in about four minutes.

On to Kurtha and Bhangaha

One working a day carries on north-east. Past Kurtha — the end of the rebuilt line for its first fifteen months, and the station in every photograph of the 2022 reopening — it runs through Khutta Pipradhi, Loharpatti and Singyahi to Bhangaha, also called Bijalpura, 51 kilometres from Jaynagar. That last 23 kilometres opened in July 2023, and the ride is the quietest part of the journey: single track through open fields, four stops, and a terminus with no town around it to speak of. Rails have been laid no further, though the survey for the extension to Bardibas, and eventually the east–west highway, began in December 2023.

The whole line is straight, flat and slow. Fifty-one kilometres take two and a half hours end to end, which is about twenty kilometres an hour — and even that is quick by local standards: on the 762 mm line that ran here until 2014, a contemporary report timed the 28 kilometres from Jaynagar to Janakpur at four to five hours.

Nepal Railway Company runs six trains a day: three from Jaynagar into Nepal and three back, of which one pair works the full line through to Bhangaha. The trains are numbered NR 1 to NR 6, and the times below are the operator's own, issued at Janakpurdham and in force since 17 November 2023.

Into Nepal — Jaynagar to Janakpur and Bhangaha

Back to India — Bhangaha and Janakpur to Jaynagar

Every day, all year. There is no seasonal timetable and no weekly pattern: the same six trains run on Saturdays and at festivals as on any other day. Jaynagar to Janakpur is 1 hr 15 min, Janakpur to Bhangaha 1 hr 10 min, and the full 51 kilometres 2 hr 25 min.

What can interrupt it

Two things, and both have happened recently. In June 2025 both Nepali railcars went to Indian Railways' Charbagh workshop at Lucknow for overhaul, and the service ran for months on a replacement rake lent by India that had no air-conditioned coach. In late July 2026 the trains stopped altogether while a curfew was in force in Dhanusha district; the operator's notice of 2 August 2026 put them back to the timetable above from ten o'clock that morning. Neither was announced far ahead, and both were announced on the same page.

As of September 2026, from the revised DEMU timing and the notices published by Nepal Railway Company Limited at nepalrailway.gov.np (opens in a new tab). The operator's site is served over plain HTTP; its secure certificate has expired.

Tickets are sold in cash at the station window before departure. There is no online booking, no reservation and no seat allocation in general class; the air-conditioned coach, which has 56 seats and no standing, is the one place where a seat is guaranteed. Fares come from a single tariff the operator published in August 2023 and has not changed since, and the air-conditioned fare is exactly five times the general fare for the same pair of stations.

Cross-border passengers need identity documents at Inarwa, where customs and immigration sit. Indian and Nepali nationals travel on a government photo ID; third-country nationals may use the railway inside Nepal but are not permitted to cross into India on it, under the operating procedure the two countries agreed in 2021. If that is you, the ticket to buy is a domestic one — Janakpur to Bhangaha, or south no further than Inarwa.

No rail pass covers this railway, and none covers Nepal. Interrail's Global Pass is a European product — its own page describes a network of 33 European countries — and the One Country Passes are drawn from the same list. Nepal is on neither. Nor is this an Indian Railways train, whatever the Indian station at one end suggests: it is run by Nepal Railway Company on its own tariff, and sold only at its own windows.

There is nothing to regret. The whole 51 kilometres costs 130 rupees in general class and 650 with air-conditioning, bought in cash minutes before departure, and no pass could improve on a fare that low or on a railway with one line and six trains a day.

Checked against interrail.com's Global Pass and One Country Pass pages, September 2026.

Almost everything worth stopping for on this line is in or near Janakpur, and almost all of it is within twenty minutes' walk of the station. The city is the setting of the marriage of Sita and Rama in the Ramayana, and the temples, tanks and pilgrim streets that follow from that story are what the train is full of people coming to see.

Two of the three below are in the city itself. The third, Dhanushadham, is out towards the Bhangaha end of the line and needs a short road hop from Kurtha or Janakpur.

Janakpur is where you sleep. It is the only place on the line with hotels of any size, and the timetable pushes you towards a night there anyway: the last train back to India leaves at 16:40, and the one working through to Bhangaha does not return until half past seven the next morning. Rooms cluster around Station Road, Shiva Chowk and Ramanand Chowk, all a few minutes from the platform.

Bhangaha and Kurtha have nothing to offer an overnight visitor — Bhangaha in particular is a terminus in open fields. On the Indian side, Jaynagar has small hotels near its own station, but that end of the journey is closed to travellers who are neither Indian nor Nepali.