I boarded the Goa Express train at 12:30pm at the Pernem train station. Express? Hmm, it was going to take twenty-eight and a half hours to travel the 2014 kilometres to Delhi. Definitely the longest train ride I’ve been on but I don’t think you’ve “done” India if you haven’t experienced a marathon rail journey.
This is the train chart, telling you where your car will be, I was in A1, fifth from the locomotive:
Right off the bat there was confusion as there was an Indian gentleman with the same seat number as mine on his ticket. I had wimped out a bit and instead of riding in the “sleeper” class where most locals ride, I opted for the second class A/C, however this car was a third class A/C one. The difference is that in the main cabin, the 2nd class only has four people while the 3rd has six. Okay, no biggie and we’ll wait for the ticket inspector to come along and sort it out. The four guys sitting there were gem merchants and quite nice guys and told me I was welcome to stay there. They too had thought it should be a 2nd class car but said that Indian Rail had probably decided to switch it to get more people on board. The inspector did eventually arrive and gave me a new seat number which was on the side of the car. I walked down the aisle to check it out but someone had turned the lower berth into a bed, closed the curtains and was fast asleep...okay, I’ll come back later.
I found a different, empty seat and settled in for the ride. The terrain in Goa and into Maharashtra is quite lush with many tropical trees and hills and hence many tunnels. I was trying to use my laptop with my USB modem stick and it seemed that every time it connected and I just started to open a web page...tunnel!
We passed by Mumbai in the early evening, stopping at a couple of stations where a number of people boarded the train and it was now quite full. Just prior to the first stop, I figured this was the time to stake my claim in my real seat before the confusion compounded.
I was the only Caucasian in the car so I did receive a fair number of stares and the odd smile but everyone was quite friendly, as I’ve found generally in this country.
Everyone began to settle down for bed around 10pm. Being on the side lower bunk, I only had one bunk above me (but two people were in it, a father and his one year old son) while in the main section, there were three beds stacked on either side of the cabin. I was glad that I’m no taller than I am as I just, and I mean just fit. Lying on my back, my feet were flat against the far wall with my head less than an inch from the close one. The other beds looked longer and more comfortable as mine had a ridge running width wise in the middle from where the backs of the two seats come down to meet each other, however mine did have more privacy since I had a curtain. With my recent back injury, I found this crack was just exactly in the wrong place.
Ready for bed:
There was only half a curtain, yet surprisingly one of my shirt's buttons perfectly slotted into the curtain rail...I guess it was a "shirtain":
The cabin seemed quite hot for being A/C so I decided to fold up my blanket and use it as a mattress and just have the sheets to cover me. It seemed like a good plan at first as my back’s comfort level increased but after falling asleep, the place turned into an icebox. I got up and fished out an extra shirt, some socks (as having them against the wall was really chilling them out), my long johns and even my toque! I tried this for about an hour but waking up again, I resorted to wriggling between my blanket so that half still served as a mattress and half as cover. This did the trick but I woke up many times in the night thanks to the tight area, the odd crying child and the shaking around caused by the train.
I awoke at sunrise the next day to a landscape that had flattened out and the trees were fewer and farther between. I dozed off and again until 9am and the sparseness had increased due to flat shale rock preventing larger vegetation from taking root. There were stone fences dividing up some of this barren land...must have taken a lot of effort to make them.
The flatlands:
Some old hill fort in Rajasthan:
We had stopped once during the night and then we had one more stop in the late morning at Kota Junction, an important area of industry (primarily chemical) in the state of Rajasthan and also a link to some busy rail lines heading east.
At four in the afternoon, we began to roll into the outskirts of Delhi. Not surprisingly, the sides of the tracks were lined with slum dwellings, lots of garbage with pigs, cows and dogs looking for goodies. Surprisingly we actually arrived pretty much on time.
Namaste Delhi...you big stinky city!
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