Most of them complain of lack of basic facilities at the stations from where they start their tracking expeditions — low frequency of services, inadequate number of ticket vending machines et al.

During weekends, Mumbai’s far-off suburbs like Kalyan, Kasara and Karjat see a large number of trekkers boarding and alighting at the Central Railway stations. But, according to them, standing in queues for tickets kill a lot of their time as no coupon facility is available there.

Low frequency of trains adds to their woes.

Jitendra Gupta, a regular trekker from the 30-year-old Explorer and Adventure Club narrated the difficulties he faced during his recent adventure. Gupta, in a group of 20, was returning from Mangi Tungi, 150 kilometres from Nasik, after visiting a Jain pilgrimage. He reached Kasara station at 7:40 pm to board a train at 8:20 pm to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

“There was no space for even one person to enter. We all had bags on us and we kept searching for a coupon validating machine as standing in the long queue would mean missing the train,” Gupta said.

As the group consisted of a number of girls, missing the train would mean waiting for the next at 10 pm.

“We were worried about the girls. But for that day, standing for more than 40 minutes in the queue, we got the tickets for the 8:20 local,” he added.

A member of the group, Sheetal Shah, a chartered accountant with Percent in Lower Parel, said, “If we had missed the train, we would have reached CST by 12 at night. I was very worried.”

According to Gupta, CR’s mega blocks make journey during weekends all the more tough.

“The railways have no provision to run extra trains during the evenings on weekends though the crowd must be a many times more then.”

When contacted on the matter, Public Relation Officer (PRO) for CR AK Singh said, “We will install two machines at Kasara in a few days. It’s in the process. However, we have stamping facility for commuters who can buy coupons from other stations and get them stamped at Kasara.”