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Published: October 26th 2008
Sitting on a train watching the chaos that is India glide by, I turned up my iPOD a notch. I realized I was listening to James Blunt's
Back to Bedlam album - "How appropriate," I though!
The Indian passengers on our Aeroflot flight into Delhi were up to their usual shinanigans - sitting in the wrong seat on purpose, continuing to stand when the seatbelt signs were illuminated, and insisting that their tea be served in a glass instead of a cup. It was rather amusing for us but you could tell that the poor stewardesses were getting to the end of their tether after five hours of nonsense!
It made Scott and I start to worry about our upcoming 18-hour train ride from Delhi to Calcutta. If there are two things that don't go well together in Indian culture, it is "transport" and "third class". I swear we'd agreed to second class with our travel agent in Delhi, but then he said in an email that our tickets would be third - hmmm. It reminded me of the last time we took a train in India over 5 years ago. It was a 24-hour journey and we paid
for a second class sleeper. Upon boarding, however, we were told that we had been sold an inferior ticket (it was all in Hindi so we couldn't read it) and had to in fact stand in the aisle between the two stinking toilets for the whole time - not pleasant! Since that experience, we had stuck to buses in India, until now...
We headed straight to our travel agent in Delhi after checking into one of the grotty rooms in Delhi's backpacker ghetto, Pahar Ganj. We instantly got worried when he explained that the lovely express train that we were supposed to get had been fully booked, so he had instead booked us into a different train. This took 24 hours instead of 18, and it didn't include meals, but as he upgraded us to second class instead of third, it was the same price. There wasn't a lot we could do about it apart from agree. We did, however, get nervous that it wasn't legitimate as he said he couldn't give us seat numbers until a few hours befopre departure. Another area of concern was a newspaper article that we read on the plane. It reported of trains
being set on fire by protesters in the state of Bihar. We didn't know where this was at the time, but we soon found out that our train had to go right through it to make it to Calcutta.
We decided to investigate further and walked to the train station, itself a chaotic medley of honking rickshaws, beggars, and random cows. We even saw two huge elephants being ridden slowly down the street. Nothing is impossible in India!
After having the usual scam artists try to divert us to their tourist offices, we managed to make it up to the official tourist ticketing office. We were told that we should be able to get our seat numbers right away, but we had to show our tickets. So, we trekked back to our travel agents, dodging rickshaws and big-horned cows the whole way, and got our train ticket off him. Then, we traversed the chaos yet again and found the same man at the train station. This time, he said that we in fact
couldn't get our seat allocation until a few hours before the train left! That was exactly what our travel agent had said, but a complete
contradiction of what he had said to us just a few minutes earlier! I don't think I will ever understand India.
The next day we got our seat numbers are were relieved that they were together. There was no guarantee of this apparently as they are computer generated. We then headed straight to the train station, found our platform, and waited for the train to arrive. When it did it was quite chaotic, with people rushing all over the place. Two men shoved past me carrying a big sharp metal box and put a hole in my trousers - grr! As we walked along the length of the train towards where our carriage was supposed to be, we noticed that people were no longer just boarding the train calmly. They were now dashing along before forming disorderly lines, pushing and shoving and sometimes even being beaten by the guards. Oh no! We had the sinking feeling it had happened again - our seat numbers were phoney and we would soon be told to join the seething mob to fight for standing room in the corridor. After continuing to ask around, we eventually found our carriage, HA1 - hooray, it did exist! When we located our beds we were even more happy. Instead of the usual six to a cabin, we happened to get the end compartment which had only two beds in it - how lucky was that?!
From there it was easy. We amused ourselves with our books and iPOD and watched out the window as crumbling buildings and colorful saris glided by. Every so often, vendors would walk by selling snacks. We stopped a man who walked by shouting something like "Chowmein!" It turned out to be a deep fried ball of something (maybe potato?) stuffed with some kind of mush. Sounds gross but was actually quite tasty.
At around 9pm they brought dinner - two types of veggie curry, rice and chapatti for less than a dollar! As we looked around the aeroplane-style tray, we realized there was something fundamental missing - the cutlery. We started eating it Indian style, using our chapatti to scoop up the dal, but we were looking at the rest with fear. Eating "baby food" as Scott calls it, just with your fingers, can be quite daunting, expecially when you've not been able to wash your hands properly. As we were pondering this, the dinner man brought a plasic spoon to us - fantastic!
The next morning I was awoken to the sounds of the tea man shouting, "chai! chai!" and the breakfast man bringing us our omelette sandwich with spicy peppers, just to make sure we didn't forget we were in India! It turned out that we were in the dreaded Biher state, the place in the news because of the riots, but everything looked calm and beautiful. There were lush green rice paddies and palm trees as far as the eye could see and many lakes filled with flowering lillies creating a carpet of pink and white. As we went through the various stations we looked for evidence of the riots but saw nothing. I realized that there was very litte chance of running into a riot actually occurring as it was 8am Sunday morning - the students would all still be in bed! The only evidence we saw of the troubles was the fact that two armed police were stationed in our carriage for part of the Bihar section.
One very bizarre thing we saw was a dead body lying on a makeshift wooden stretcher in one of the stations we passed through. His arms were set in wierd angles, rigit with rigamortic I suppose, but the most alarming part was that his head was missing, leaving just a bright red severed neck. I yelled at Scott to look. If he hadn't seen it I'd have thought I was hallucinating. The strangest thing about it all was the other people's reactions. There were dozens of people sitting on the platform floor just feet away from the decapitated body, idly waiting for their train as if nothing had happened. Like I said before, sometimes I just don't understand India at all!
Well, we made it to Calcutta only one hour late. Unfortunately, it was raining, which doesn't bode well for our upcoming beach stint! We just checked into a hotel at the airport, ate dinner, did some internet (where I am now) and we are off to bed in a few minutes, ready for a 4am wake-up call for our flight to the islands. Good night!
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patricia
non-member comment
Hey again
When I read your blogs I usually wish I was still "out there" in the world, but NOT in a train in India. Actually, from the picture and description you guys should feel lucky! Your train journey was much better them mine, that's for sure. Have a fun at the beach. Patricia