Advertisement
Published: April 24th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Five excruciating hours after our departure from Kollam, we arrived in the Kerelan capital of Thirvundrum. At this point, the series of overcrowded, non A/C public buses ridden over the past few days were taking a serious toll on us and we were all a bit edgy. We searched around for our connecting bus to Kanyakumari, and, received conflicting information regarding the time of departure and platform number. We waited around until the first time we were told passed, then, decided to change plans last minute and catch the A/C train up to Chennai. Unfortunately for us, our long, tiring day was not finished as the joys of good ‘ol fashion convoluted Indian process were about to begin.
Now, the following details may not be the most exciting read, however, they provide a good summary on how things tend to operate here in India. First, Nicole went to the “Queries” booth to check train times, availability and foreign quota details for all trains going to Chennai. She was told to purchase the tickets at “Queries”, window #2. After elbowing her way through to window #2, she was told that she needed to acquire a slip of paper providing her permission
to purchase tickets for her desired train. Without Rozy or myself there to collectively decide on which train (class and time) to select, she got out of line to find us. Meanwhile, Rozy and I were working another angle and attempting to purchase the tickets in the logical manner by going directly to the ticket counter. We were turned down and told we needed to have a slip of paper from the “Queries” booth in order to purchase the ticket. We then left the ticket counter and went in search of Nicole.
With the three of us reunited, we got back in queue at “Queries” window #2 in order to get our permission slip that allowed us to purchase tickets from the ticket counter. Nicole was our point person elbowing old ladies and doing a fine job boxing out several Indian men as we made our way through the disorderly queue. We finally made it to the front, acquired our slip of paper and dutifully took it back to the ticket counter queue in order to actually purchase the ticket.
After standing in the ticket counter queue for about 15 minutes, our turn came and we passed our
little scrap of paper to the woman behind the counter. She gave it a funny look, asked a question to the lady sitting next to her and then told us we would have to go back to the “Queries” booth to pay for the ticket upgrade. We looked back at her confused, and, she motioned me to go over to the ticket counter next to her. I spoke to ticket counter lady #2 who informed me that the ticket counter people are not able to issue 2AC seats and that we would have to purchase 3AC tickets from ticket counter lady #1, then, take our 3AC tickets back over to the “Queries” booth in order to pay for and receive our upgrade to 2AC.
We paid ticket counter lady #1 for our 3AC tickets and she fished our change out of a large wooden drawer filled to the max with pile of mixed notes. We then headed back to the “Queries” booth where we queued again in order to upgrade our 3AC tickets. Upon our turn, we handed our 3AC tickets to the lady behind the counter (who had originally gave us the scrap of paper with which to
purchase the tickets) and, she did some handwritten maths on a piece of paper and came up with an amount that we needed to pay in order to upgrade to 2AC. We attempted to clarify the upgrade charge, were reasonably happy with its accuracy, then paid the money. This time the lady took our payment and fished our change out of a plastic coke bottle that had been cut in half containing rolled up bills and coins stuffed into it. We got our change and another slip of paper indicating our upgrade, and, everything seemed great until we boarded the train; this was the point at which we learned we were double-booked. This, my friends, is how things get done in India!
So, our evening in Kanyakumari was cancelled, and, our entire day turned out to be nothing more than bus and train travel. No worries though as we really needed to get to Chennai as Nicole was flying soon and there was some last minute shopping to do. Our departure from Thirvundrum was sadly our departure from Kerela as well. As we departed Kerela, we all agreed that the little communist state in the south had a great
MY DEBUT NOVEL AVAILABLE NOW!
Visit me at www.danielshortell.com for purchase information. vibe about it. Generally speaking, Kerelans are incredibly friendly people and life seemed to be a bit slower pace in Kerela compared to other places in India. The rickshaw drivers don’t take advantage of you, vendors selling stuff actually charge you the price printed on the item (instead of ripping you off) and tourism isn’t nearly as intense as many other places in India. Kerela was good to us and is a nice place to slow things down a bit, eat the “tropical” side of Indian food, and appreciate a less known version of the subcontinent.
STATISTICS
- Flights taken = 9
- Intercity trains rides taken = 16
- Intercity bus rides taken = 35
- Times lost = 18
- Total instances of diarrhea = 6
- Total number of requests for pictures with Daniel = 35
- Total megabytes of pictures taken = 31,770
Advertisement
Tot: 0.226s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 21; qc: 104; dbt: 0.1355s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Rani
non-member comment
Thiruvananthapuram
Thiruvananthapuram....wow talk about massive word. 18 letters...how many times did you look at ur travel book to see if your spelt it correctly?