Platform II at the Old Delhi railway station was overflowing with those who had come to see off their relatives travelling by the Delhi-Attari Express, which left at 2115 IST on Wednesday.
The passengers were excited, as they would take the Attari-Lahore Samjhauta Express on Thursday morning. It was after two years that the Indo-Pak train link had been restored.
Seventy-year-old Abdul Ahaad Khan from Kupwara district, Kashmir, told rediff.com: "I cannot express my happiness in words. I am travelling with 12 persons of my family, including four women and three children, to Lahore to see my sister Zaina Begum."
They will spend nearly a month there before returning to India.
"I wish the rulers of India and Pakistan realise how important it is for us the common people that the two neighbours have friendly relations," he said. "Otherwise we will not be able to see our near and dear ones for long time."
He also said Indo-Pak dialogue should succeed.
Faiz Mohammed (60) and Haji Gulam Nabi (65) from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, reached Delhi on Wednesday morning.
They said they were going to Karachi to see their relatives.
Gulam Nabi had last gone to Pakistan in 1960; Mohammad had visited Lahore in 1997.
Shujao Rehman, his wife Saima Suja and their two children were returning to Pakistan after spending over a month in India. Rehman had a word of praise for home ministry officials, who took less than an hour to allow him to change his mode of transport.
Rehman had come to attend his sister's wedding in Hyderabad. Though his visa allowed him to go to other places, he could not do so because his daughter was unwell.
Bilal Ahmed, imam in a mosque in Aligarh University, was taking his wife and two children to Pakistan to be with their relatives. "My wife is a Pakistani national and she has not seen her parents and other relatives for a long time now. We are going there after a gap of six years," he said.
Asked why his wife of 16 years had not got Indian citizenship, he said she had applied but the paperwork was yet to be completed.
He also praised Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for his statesmanship. "I wish our prime minister a long glorious life."
