Riding the train
July 25th, 2009
Riding a train is a lot of fun and when it is done in India at night, well the fun is compounded. I am using FUN loosely of course as Kim, Sue and Tracy would probably differ with me on what makes for a fun time. Starbucks, a good book, clean clothes and a planned agenda are probably more up their alley.
Me, loosey goosey is how I roll.
Picture the scene, mobs of Indians running and walking for their train that leaves in 5 minutes, it’s night, the train if full with people hanging out the doors and maybe even the windows. There are about 25 cars, so the train stretches down the platform and into the hazy, smoke filled night. 4 Americans and their luggage, a Catholic priest, photographer, ex-Catholic priest and his son, driver and no this isn’t a joke, it’s the truth. We run back and forth looking for 1A but all we find is A1 which I have learned from experience are not one in the same.
We ask Indian Railway officials for help but like many, no help. Finally this young priest tells us just get on, grab a seat, force someone out of theirs, this is your car, no problem. Problem was I knew it wasn’t our car as there was no 1A on the Rockfort Express bound for Chennai. The trains starts moving and our luggage and the ladies are taking up the entire vestibule of A1. Sure enough, wrong car and it turns out we are supposed to be in H1. Funny, our ticket doesn’t say that, but H1 was where we were told our sleeping compartment was.
Let’s go to H1. Well you need to jump off the train to do this, next station in 5 mintues, station stop 30 seconds. Holy Cow.
In Trichy they joined 2 trains together to make one really long train and resultantly you can’t walk the entire train, so from where we were we could only go so far until we bumped into the end of the car.
On 3 let’s jump, one, two, three – off I go, next Sue, Tracy and then Kim starts throwing off luggage and then jumps herself as the train comes to a stop.
H1 was to far for us and our luggage in 30 seconds so we elected to go 2 cars and jump back on and then make our way up to H1 through the narrow passage ways of 2 and 3 tier sleeper cars jammed with Indians.
Good news was we made it; bad news our showers we had about an hour earlier didn’t do us any good as we are now hot, sweaty messes. Oh well, Chennai is only 7 hours away, we have a sleeper car to ourselves and it has a wonderfully functioning AC. Thanks God for the simple pleasures and for making it a FUN night…at least in my book.
Ha ha ha! This is a crack up. So glad you made the train…I can picture it now…did the Trichy train station smell like raw fish too? Wish I were there…