This February we had were graced with a wonderful misfortune: the misfortune, our dear dear friend Sara H. found out she needed to have her gallbladder taken out; the wonderful part, she is living in Mysore (southern India) and was going to come to Delhi for the surgery and convalescence. Following Sara's successful surgery and convalescence (aided by copious shopping) we embarked on a little trip together. Sara was kind enough to let me reproduce this post from her blog (linked here)
I have a lot of material to cover from the last couple months, which
in all likelihood will not ever see the light of day, but my quick
trip with D to Ajanta, Ellora, and Daulatabad definitely deserves to
be shared. Traveling in India can, frankly, be a bitch, but this trip
at the end of February was miraculously smooth thanks to D's great
planning. Before I get into the details of where we went and what we
saw I am going to devote at least one post to India's train culture —
yes, that belovedly inept system started by the British in the mid
1850s that remains the dominant mode of long distance transportation
within India.
To start at the beginning, foreign credit/debit cards are no longer
accepted on India Rail's website so if you don't have an Indian card,
which are extremely difficult to get, you are forced to go to the
train station directly or a booking branch. Since the Indian Rail
system is in such high demand and functions at near capacity the vast
majority of the time getting a ticket on short notice can be tricky
business. D and I got up early to go to New Delhi Railway station at
some ungodly hour to purchase tickets under the foreigner quota only
to be told that because I carry a student visa I am ineligible and
would have to try for a "tatkal" ticket.
Tatkal tickets are a group of higher priced tickets reserved for last
minute booking early in the morning two days before the departure
date. The demand for train tickets is extremely high and people take
this all very seriously — not seriously in the waiting in line
patiently kind of way, but rather pushing, shoving, fighting, and
sneaking to the front of the line. Hey, with 1 billion plus people in
this country you do what works to get shit done. D and I observed some
fights break out and I almost got into a physical altercation in the
ladies line. Yup. In desperation to hold my place in line while under
threat from line jumpers I put my body on the line for a train ticket.
Luckily I didn't get hurt, but I also didn't hold my place
successfully in line. Boo!
Here I am unrelentingly harassing the man in front of me who was
standing in the ladies/foreigner/senior reservation line. He got so
fed up with me he gave me the hand. The audacity, really, considering
that he claimed that there are no such reservation lines for tatkal
tickets. If anyone gives you that bullshit excuse do not buy it.
There are always ladies lines.
During the trip we had some time to kill so D decided to cancel so
unneeded train tickets. Even though this wasn't a tatkal line it was
still pretty intense.
D boxing out the competition. He definitely has height to his
advantage compared to the other Indian men.
A close up of D demonstrating excellent arm positioning to block people from cutting in line.
Plus he gives a killer stink eye that says "do not mess with me and my place in line".
Waiting in lines is fun? Not really, but he's a good natured guy.
The act of getting a ticket, locating the platform and the correct train, and then the inevitable wait for the train to arrive are all messy business, but for me hands down the hardest part of traveling is the food. I bring my own snacks, but even still on long journeys I am forced to buy at least one train meal.
This looks innocent enough, right? WRONG. Train food always does crazy things to my stomach, which sucks under normal conditions and is particularly intense when one only has recourse to an Indian train bathroom. Without going into the details too much, imagine squatting on a moving train with only water and no toilet paper. Um, yeah.
However, on our trip D ate the food, but then he'll eat anything.
Suspiciously I had a few bites. The flavour reminded me of something that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Was it a spice? Er, no. Then I realized that it actually tasted like dirt. Seriously, dirt.
I'm going to generalize here and say that any trip is better via train and, thus, unsurprisingly train travel has occupied the minds of many a great authors with the most obvious, at least to me, being Dostoevsky (at least something from that brief period of majoring in Russian literature stuck). A trip that could take a mere hour or two via plane becomes infinitely more complex and interesting on a train. All that said, my days of train travel within India are coming to a close as the price of air travel comes down, my salary goes up, and my body can no longer tolerate being on a train for twenty plus hours.
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