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OU can’t complain about the ticket prices. A 160km trip on the Kangra Valley Railway, through some of northern India’s loveliest landscapes, costs just 35 rupees — around R7.

The journey, winding past the Himalayan foothills, takes just short of 10 hours. But what’s the hurry? This is a perfect example of slow travel at its — well — slowest.

This isn’t one of the high-profile hill railways. For every thousand tourists who take the celebrated “Toy Train” up to Shimla, hardly a handful do the narrow-gauge Kangra service, around 112km further north. Tipped for Unesco world heritage status, it climbs to almost 1 220m, with 33 scheduled station stops. It offers spectacular views of the snowcapped Dhauladhar range and the valley itself — “a picture of rural loveliness and repose,” as a colonial official wrote a century ago.

Don’t expect a tourist train, says Ashok Kumar, as he drives my wife Clare and me through a misty early morning to Pathankot, the railway junction where the Kangra line, completed in 1929, starts its long haul east to the town of Joginder Nagar.

“It’s a very simple train,” says Ashok. “Local people travel on it.” Through the mist, we can just about make out shawl-swathed men on bicycles, lorries with bulging loads of hay, and shutters being rattled up for the day at dhabas — cheap roadside restaurants.

At the station, a few dozen passengers are waiting for the train. People sleep on the platform, vague shapes under thick blankets. A man sits on a bench as a barber shaves him.

The walls of the Reservations Room are dotted with notices: “Cleanliness is our goal … And you have an important role.” “It’s about your health and hygiene … So help us keep trains and stations clean.” Indian Railways probably has a Directorate of Rhyming Homilies churning this stuff out.

We pay 25 rupees (R5) each at the ticket office. We’re only doing the first half of the journey, as far as Kangra, a small town best known for its fort. It’s 96km taking just under five hours. You can’t buy tickets in advance or reserve seats, so you have to hope