Indian Railways has cleared a Vande Bharat Express between Surat and Udaipur that will run via Ahmedabad, with services expected to begin before Navratri. It will be the sixth train of that class serving Gujarat. The rake behind it is not an addition to the fleet. According to DeshGujarat, the Udaipur City–Asarva service that started commercial runs in February will stop, and the same train will work the longer South Gujarat route instead.
The schedule on paper
AajTak reports a 6.10 am departure from Surat, arrival at Udaipur City at 1.40 pm, a turnaround at 3.35 pm and a return to Surat at 11 pm. Seven and a half hours each way, six days a week, with Tuesday off. The formation runs to eight coaches, Surat holds the primary maintenance, and Vadodara and Asarva are listed as water-refilling points. Union minister C R Patil, quoted in the same report, said the service would cut journey times and lift tourism and trade between the two states.
A rake that keeps moving house
The Asarva train was itself a redeployment. When the Railway Board sanctioned it in February, the railways withdrew two Udaipur-based Vande Bharat services, to Jaipur and to Agra Cantonment, as News24 and DeshGujarat both reported at the time. Barely six months later, the same rake shifts again, this time 250-odd kilometres further down the line. Ahmedabad does not lose the connection, but Asarva stops being a terminus and becomes an intermediate point on somebody else’s train.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A terminus station gets the empty rake, the cleaning, the reservation quota and the boarding comfort of an origin. An intermediate stop gets whatever seats the originating city has not already booked. Passengers travelling Ahmedabad to Udaipur will now join a train that has been running for roughly three hours, during a festive season when Rajasthan-bound demand from Gujarat peaks. Whether the railways protects an Ahmedabad quota is the detail worth watching in the fare and stoppage notification, which has not yet been published.
What South Gujarat gains
Surat has never had a same-day rail link to Udaipur. The textile and diamond trades in the city draw traders, workers and families from southern Rajasthan, and until now that journey meant an overnight train, a change at Ahmedabad, or a long road run. A morning departure and an early-afternoon arrival makes a one-way business trip workable in daylight. The return leg is less friendly: leaving Udaipur at 3.35 pm and reaching Surat at 11 pm rules out a same-day round trip and lands passengers at Surat station close to midnight, when autorickshaw and city-bus options thin out.
For the Gujarat leg, the more useful outcome may be the intra-state one. A Surat departure that touches Vadodara and Ahmedabad in the morning gives South Gujarat a fast daytime option towards the state capital region on six days of the week, on a corridor where premium seats sell out well ahead.
What to watch next
- The stoppage list and fares. Shamlaji Road, added as a halt on the Asarva service in March, has no guarantee of surviving the reroute.
- Whether Asarva retains any originating premium service, or slips back to being a secondary Ahmedabad terminal.
- The start date. Navratri begins on 11 October, which leaves the railways about five weeks to notify, trial and start the service if it wants it running for the festival rush.
- Occupancy on the Surat–Ahmedabad section. If short-distance riders fill the train, Udaipur passengers from Ahmedabad will feel it first.
Gujarat now has six Vande Bharat services on paper. Counting them tells you less than asking where the rakes came from, and this one has already changed address twice in a year.
Sources: DeshGujarat, AajTak, News24, DeshGujarat (March 2026)
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.