Interlude: Trains — IndefinitelyOOO

As much as we have loved all the places we’ve visited, as memorable as our destinations has been the getting there. From the start, we’ve avoided internal flights, despite their convenience, time-saving and affordability. Travelling on the Indian Railways, although arduous at times, has afforded us a view of the country we wouldn’t have otherwise seen and given us the opportunity to meet and talk to so many different people that our train journeys are worth a small mention in their own right.

By the time we are done, we will have taken around thirty-five individual journeys of any length and covered something like six thousand miles, our longest journeys being as much as thirty hours, our most delayed train late by a day.

A few notes on the experience.

Class:

Most of our journeys were taken in 2AC. Second class, Air Conditioned. Hardly the Orient Express but a perfectly fine way to travel. Small bulkheads divide the carriages into open compartments, screened by a ratty curtain with four bunks bolted to each side and another two, transverse in the corridor. Occasionally we went 3AC, the same set up but with three tiers of bunks rather than two, so eight per compartment. Roomy it is not. During the day all passengers share the lower bunks until evening when a general consensus is reached and the top bunks are pulled down and upstairs residents scramble up using bunk fixtures and sometimes my head as a ladder.

Bedsheets are usually provided, well worn and threadbare but typically clean enough. Also provided are a flannel, a thin pillow and a hairy blanket; decidedly less clean.

The train itself is noisy and passengers are united in an etiquette that would drive your typical English commuter insane. Phones are answered on speaker, people watch movies and play video games and wallahs move up and down the corridors singing their wares; chai, fried food, omlette sandwiches and more. I will miss the train chai which is sweet, spiced and delicious and a necessary accompaniment to the omelette sandwich, which, while tasty enough, is the driest thing you’ll ever eat.

It’s barely quieter at night. Every station brings an influx of new passengers wrestling with their luggage and loudly looking for their berths or turfing squatters out. We’ve been guilty of this ourselves. What’s remarkable is how easy-going everyone is. Someone’s woken by the noise, they fall asleep again without an angry word said. I woke a man at 3.00 in the morning, firmly insisting that he was in my bunk. He patiently reviewed my ticket and lead me into the next carriage where my actual bunk lay empty before returning without a hint of animosity. Try that on the London to Glasgow sleeper, I dare you.

Snoring and farting is the music of the night train. And what snoring! Enthusiastic bass rumbles rock the carriage and rattle the windows. I could fall asleep on a washing line but Helen’s a light sleeper. On one of our first overnights I’m woken, not by the high-decibel nose symphony but by Helen’s plaintive voice, pleading with a virtuoso snorer in the next compartment to pack it in. His snoring continues uninterrupted.

For last minute journeys we’re sometimes in General Class or Second Seating, the cheapest and most rudimentary seats. These are the carriages you’ll have seen with the unglazed barred windows and mobs of people hanging out of the doors. Although a little uncomfortable for long journeys it’s boisterous, lively and entertaining. Conversations are held across the carriage at full volume, ten guys read the same paper over each other’s shoulders and the kids shriek in unison in every tunnel.

Conductors:

Occasionally surly guys with big metal badges of office weighing down their jackets, most train conductors we meet are lovely. Misinformed in Punjab, we board the wrong train but a sympathetic conductor sets us straight and advises us that by getting out further down the line, we can meet our actual train, something not clear from the timetables. As the right train pulls in, we’re met by an identical-looking conductor who comes looking for us as his friend on the first train had phoned ahead to let him know our error.

Food:

On the longer journeys you can order a simple meal of curry, rice, daal and chapattis. It’s pretty good but can be a struggle to eat in a vibrating upper bunk, as evidenced by the wreckage of long-forgotten meals in the bedding. We travel armed with biscuits and cake but often have little need as our fellow passangers will typically insist on sharing their own meals; this generosity to complete strangers is something we see again and again and we are touched by peoples' kindness on every journey.

Toilets:

Just a catalogue of horrors. They’re not great at time of departure and don’t improve much over the three days a train can be moving.

Feet:

Everyone’s got a pair and they’re not afraid to share. You get pretty intimate with other people’s feet pretty quickly. Typical encounter: I’m sat in my berth when four old boys take up position on the facing bunk. Sit down, sandals off and stretch their legs. Eight cracked and gnarly feet make themselves comfortable in my bedding. The owners natter away, oblivious to me recoiling back into the corner and I’m left to watch the Toenail Preservation Committee hold a meeting over a picket fence of yellowing talons.

It might be a thing personal to me but wow, I do hate feet.

Travelling companions:

It may come across as if we didn’t enjoy our many train journeys but honestly, there’s no better way to travel. That’s largely down the people we share the journeys with. Because journeys are long, conversation is a necessary travel aid and because every journey has a destination, everybody has something to talk about. Encounters that stick in the mind include the family on their way to a wedding; an inter-caste love match rather than an arranged marriage, they declare excitedly. The nervous young man on his way to join the Merchant Navy who was shy and anxious but keen to practice his English and whose hands trembled as he shook ours. The two obviously gay best friends on their way to the Goa Carnival who recommend the best clubs for dancing. A older woman who admitted she’d been scared to travel alone but was pleased to be able to tell her husband that you meet nice people on the trains. An elderly gentleman who spoke no English but bought us tea and kept up a running commentary on the landmarks we were passing, invisible to us through the window. Once, without seats we were packed standing in a corridor in overcrowded third class when a young woman called down from near the ceiling, “why are you standing?” We replied that we had no seats. Laughing she says, “just tell people to move” as if it was the simplest thing in the world. Duly we do so and squeeze ourselves into the top tier and spend the next few hours chatting. She’s now an active Facebook friend, as are her family and almost everyone we came into contact with on the trains. the hundred or so schoolgirls, academic competition winners, waiting on the platform for their trophy to arrive by train. And on our last long trip, a happy, extended family of Jains - forty of them, from infant to ancient - who took over the neighbouring carriage, invited us to join them and wouldn’t take no for an answer. They’re on a pilgrimage to a temple dedication. The young women are giggly and excited by their road trip, the men are cheerful and fuss around uselessly under the direction of the family matriarchs who insist that space is found for us before breaking out huge Tupperware drums of food for sharing. Jains are strict vegans and even include onions and garlic in the list of food they can’t eat and while on pilgrimage they’re further restricted to only grain-based food. But the feast is delicious; everyone has contributed breads and daal, flavoured rice and dishes of lentils and pulses and they take pleasure in telling us who made what. There are endless cups of chai and we eat hugely, our protestations that we’re full ignored with a smile. They’re good people. We’re pleased to spend time with them and sorry to say our goodbyes.

Without getting too metaphorical, India is well represented by the trains. Impossible numbers of people in too small a space, making the best of it and rubbing along good-naturedly for the most part. Tolerance is the order of the day, as it has to be when you’re arsehole to elbow with the people you share the space with. It’s far from perfect and not always easy - there are a handful of stinking midnight station platforms I’m happy to never visit again - but I can’t imagine completing our journey any other way.