The Surat-Udaipur Vande Bharat Express will begin operations with an inaugural special on October 2, connecting the two cities through nine stations before regular services start on October 3. The new service will run six days a week, except Tuesdays, while the existing Udaipur City-Asarwa Vande Bharat Express will be discontinued from October 2.
According to North Western Railway chief public relations officer Amit Sudarshan, inaugural special train 09103 will depart Surat at 10am on October 2 and reach Udaipur City at 5.40pm. It will stop at Bharuch, Vadodara, Anand, Maninagar, Asarwa, Himmatnagar, Shamlaji Road, Dungarpur and Jawar before reaching its final destination.
The inaugural service will operate with an eight-coach Vande Bharat rake. From the start of regular operations, the train will run under numbers 26903 and 26904, with the same nine intermediate stops and eight-coach configuration.
Train 26904 will leave Udaipur City at 3.35pm and arrive in Surat at 11pm from October 3. The return service, train 26903, will depart Surat at 6.10am and reach Udaipur City at 1.40pm from October 4. The different start dates for the two regular services mean that the Udaipur-to-Surat journey will begin a day before the Surat-to-Udaipur service.
The route brings together major urban and regional stations across Gujarat and Rajasthan. In Gujarat, the service will call at Surat, Bharuch, Vadodara, Anand, Maninagar, Asarwa, Himmatnagar and Shamlaji Road. Dungarpur and Jawar will be the additional stops in Rajasthan before the train reaches Udaipur City.
The change also reshapes the existing Vande Bharat arrangement serving Udaipur. Train numbers 26963 and 26964, which operate between Udaipur City and Asarwa, will be discontinued from October 2. The railway has not provided further details in the supplied announcement on the reasons for replacing that service with the longer Surat-Udaipur route.
The new timetable places the morning departure from Surat and the afternoon departure from Udaipur on separate regular-service schedules. The train’s six-day operating pattern, excluding Tuesdays, will determine the weekly travel options available to passengers along the route. Further operational details, including fares and reservation information, were not included in the announcement.