train drain

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.2Mike and I decided to head to Varanasi, and here we are! It's quite an exciting city. Many more bicycles on the roads than in Delhi or Kolkata, but the main drag is still plenty crowded. We were shown the Burning Ghats by a silk-valla. A very ancient and powerful (in terms of auditory, visual, tactile, and olfactory stimulation) place, and mother Ganga is very wide and beautiful under the setting sun.

Because we came here more or less on a whim (at first we were thinking about visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar) we were not able to buy sleeper-class train tickets in Patanhokt. Instead, we got the cheapest seats for our 22 hour journey. At the height of the crowding, there were about forty people in the car, which technically had room for ten, and was about four meters wide, eight meters long, and three meters high. Needless to say, we had quite the Indian experience. Everyone got along fine (we were all on the same train, so to speak) and it was interesting to observe the spatial and social dynamics in a compressed space containing, for most of the journey, only men. I ended up sharing a two foot by six foot luggage space with a random (thankfully particularly small) Indian man for about three hours of imperfect sleep before the numbers dwindele. I was then able to secure my own elevated area, and some REM rest. I plan to write an email to the Indian Railways Corporation telling them to install hamocks in the non-sleeper cats. All in all quite the adventure. And, our (210rs) tickets were never checked! When my Hindi improves, perhaps this will be my prefered method of travel. Or maybe I will just invest in a camel.

Note:there were no people (that I saw) holding on to the sides of the train.

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Photos

Train Station in Varanasi
It was good to see this!

Comments

[momma]

what a whim
to travel from Shangri-la to the Burning Ghats....something like stardust to 'dust to dust'