Midnight Express ..or.. Trouble Train

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Damn overnights. This last one was a 10 hour beauty from 9PM in Haridwar to 8AM in Amritsar. It was gross and unsanitary, with a bathroom that's clearly seen several thousand too many asses. I use the word "bathroom" generously, as these things are simply a hole in the ground, so you can actually see the rail road ties below you as you piss into open air while standing in the foulest enclosed space this side of a box holding several decomposing cats that an elephant has just evacuated into. Basically, the train is a cess pit from top to bottom, and sleeping in it was a recipe for disaster that had a rich harvest of illness for Lucy.

We showed up at our hotel, checked in, and slept until noon. Lucy was complaining of aches and pains, and by the time we awoke, we knew we had to go buy a thermometer. She was running a bit of a temperature (99.8), so we went to the local physician who diagnosed her with traveler's diarrhea. He wrote a scrip for three medications we were carrying, and an antibiotic that would interfere with our malarial medication. Unimpressed, we decided to go back and just sleep it off.

This turns out to have been a mistake, as Lucy woke this time with a fever of 103. We immediately headed back down with the intention of going to a different doctor, when we were intercepted by our hosts. They insisted on driving us to their personal physician, who turns out to be a friend of one of the owners. In fact, one of the owners is a retired pharmacist, and knew quite a bit more than we'd first assumed. Our first impression of the hoteliers was of just another couple of Indians that wanted to tell us where to eat, what taxis to take, when to stay indoors, etc. Some people in this country come off as a bit aggressively helpful, which makes us assume that the things they're directing us to do are in some way profiting the person "helping" us. Turns out that we misread at least one of the father-son pair, as for the next couple hours he drove us to a doctor, then a couple pharmacists, and wouldn't let us pay the consultation fee despite the fact that we'd clearly dragged the physician out of bed. He explained that the MD was a personal friend of his, and that he'd declined to charge a consult. In the end, the whole ordeal cost us no more than 150rs, and when we got back to the hotel the son bought lucy a lime soda and a couple liters of ice cold water. Really quite sweet.

Even that night, Lucy had recovered quite a bit, and today she was healthy enough to see some of Amritsar's numerous amazing sights. See next blog for an excruciatingly long description of sights undescribable.

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