India, June 8 -- Javid Ahmed wasn't expecting tourists at Srinagar station on a Saturday. "We haven't had more than a handful of tourists for the past few weeks," said the 29-year-old taxi driver. "Business has been lean since Pahalgam."

But on a quiet Eid afternoon, a gleaming hulk of metal and glass rumbled into the deserted Srinagar station with over 500 passengers, catching shopkeepers, hawkers and taxi drivers - accustomed to mostly seeing train riders from within the valley - by surprise. This was a train from Jammu.

The Vande Bharat Express from Katra to Srinagar made its inaugural journeys on Saturday, bridging Kashmir with India's rail network - the culmination of a decades-long project that overcame steep engineering challenge...