How to Play Ticket to Ride - India

Ticket to Ride - India is a route-building strategy game for 2 to 5 players, played across an original 40-city map of India. Collect coloured train cards, spend them to claim rail routes between cities, and score points both for the routes you build and for completing the secret destination tickets in your hand — but a season change partway through every game raises the stakes on the coastal ferry crossings. This guide covers the full rule set exactly as it plays in our version.

Overview & Goal

Each player has a stock of 45 train cars and a hand of secret Destination Tickets naming two cities to connect. On your turn you do exactly one of three things: draw train cards, claim a route by paying cards that match its length and colour, or draw more tickets. Claiming routes scores points immediately; completed tickets add bonus points at the end of the game, but a ticket you never complete subtracts from your score instead. The game ends a round after any player drops to two or fewer trains remaining, and the highest total score — after tickets, a loop bonus, and a longest-route bonus are all added in — wins.

Components

• A map of 40 Indian cities connected by 83 routes of length 1 to 6, in eight card colours plus a number of flexible grey routes.
• 45 train cars per player, in five colours, used to claim routes.
• 110 Train Car cards — 12 each of eight colours, plus 14 Locomotive wild cards.
• 50 Destination Tickets and 6 Mail Charters (longer, higher-value tickets), each showing two cities and a point value.

Setup

Each player takes 45 train cars in their chosen colour. Shuffle the 110 Train Car cards and deal four to each player, then turn five more face up beside the deck. Shuffle the tickets separately from the Mail Charters: deal four tickets to each player, of which you must keep at least two, and one Mail Charter each, which you may keep or discard. Everyone makes this selection at the same time, in secret. The starting player then takes the first turn.

A Turn, Step by Step

On your turn, choose exactly one of the following:

1. Draw train cards. Take two cards, either blind from the deck or from the five face-up cards, replacing any face-up card taken immediately. There’s a catch: if the first card you take face-up is a Locomotive, your turn ends immediately with just that one card — Locomotives are too valuable to draw casually from the open display. A Locomotive drawn blind doesn’t carry this restriction.
2. Claim a route. Play train cards matching a route’s length and colour (or any single colour, for a grey route), place your train cars on it, and score points immediately based on its length. A route already claimed by anyone — including the parallel track of one you already own — can never be claimed again.
3. Draw destination tickets. Draw three tickets, keep at least one, and return the rest to the bottom of the ticket deck. Which tickets you’re holding stays secret until the final score.

Worked example: you’re holding four Blue cards and eyeing a length-4 Blue route worth 7 points. On your turn you claim it, handing over all four Blue cards to the discard pile and placing four of your trains on the board. Your score rises by 7 immediately, and that route is gone for everyone else for the rest of the game.

Special Rules & Edge Cases

• Grey routes accept any single colour of card, but you still can’t mix two different colours to pay for one route.
• Ferries are grey routes that also demand one or two Locomotive cards among the cards you pay, in addition to matching the rest of the length in any one colour.
• Double routes have two parallel tracks. At 2 or 3 players, only one track can ever be claimed — once someone takes it, the other closes permanently, even to the player who claimed the first. At 4 or 5 players, both tracks are open, though no single player may ever own both tracks of the same route.
• The three-Locomotive rule. If three or more of the five face-up cards are ever Locomotives at once, all five are discarded and replaced, repeating the check until fewer than three show.
• Monsoon Season. The first time the draw deck runs out and the discard pile is reshuffled into a new deck, every ferry route still unclaimed becomes one Locomotive more expensive, permanently, for the rest of the game. It happens exactly once — already-claimed ferries are unaffected, and any later reshuffle has no further effect.

How the Game Ends & Scoring

The moment any player finishes a turn with two, one, or zero trains left, every player — including that one — takes exactly one more turn, and then the game ends. Final scoring happens in order:

1. Route points, already on the board from play, using this table: length 1 = 1 point, 2 = 2, 3 = 4, 4 = 7, 5 = 10, 6 = 15.
2. Destination Tickets and Mail Charters — add the value of every one you completed, subtract the value of every one you didn’t. There’s no floor, so your final score can go negative.
3. The loop bonus. Any completed ticket whose two cities are joined by two separate routes of your own trains that don’t share a single common route segment earns a bonus that grows with how many tickets qualify, up to a maximum across five or more qualifying tickets.
4. The longest-route bonus — a flat award to whoever built the single longest unbroken chain of routes. If two or more players tie for longest, every tied player gets the full bonus.

Ties at the very end are broken first by most completed tickets, then by who holds the longest-route bonus, then by loop-bonus tickets, then by fewest trains remaining — and if everything is still tied, it’s a shared victory between everyone still tied.

Variants / Player-Count Differences

Monsoon Season, the Mail Charters, and the loop bonus are always part of our game rather than optional toggles — they’re core to how the map plays, not a house rule you can switch off. The one real structural difference is player count: double routes lock to a single track at 2 or 3 players, but open both tracks at 4 or 5, which noticeably changes how contested the map’s chokepoint cities feel.

Quick-Reference Summary

• 2–5 players, 45 trains each, one action per turn: draw cards, claim a route, or draw tickets.
• Grey routes take any one colour; ferries also need Locomotives; you can never mix two colours on one route.
• Double routes are single-track at 2–3 players, both tracks open at 4–5.
• The first deck reshuffle triggers Monsoon Season — every unclaimed ferry gets permanently pricier.
• Dropping to two or fewer trains triggers one final round for everyone, then the game ends.
• Score = route points + completed tickets − failed tickets + loop bonus + longest-route bonus.