Our plane to Varanasi was cancelled so Nikhil thought that we should finally experience a full-on Indian Railway experience – none of this effete executive chair stuff that we’d had before. Our friends who travel frequently to India love the trains so perhaps we were missing out?
All started well – we had a two-hour journey to our departure station, Satna. We arrived safely and our driver helped us procure porters:
I wandered around taking photos – I was very excited!
After a bit of a wait, our porters took us to the platform where they thought the train was coming. We had established with Nikhil that the train was half an hour late although the porters didn’t seem to know – and then the Indian Railway site which Nikhil was using went down because the Ayodhya temple was being opened and everyone was on the go! So nobody knew what was going on.
We sat on the platform, Sue with her usual stoicism (note, ironic tone):
We were a bit aghast at the carelessness of people – check out all the rubbish this young woman has generated despite the nearby bin:
We were also amazed at people’s unwillingness to use the foot over bridge – I watched this priest as he hopped across the busy tracks:
And cliche of cliches – a cow walked down the track while men carried heavy sacks (of rice?) across the ‘shortcut’:
There were of course the usual vending opportunities – water, snacks et:c:
Finally, the train came, three quarters of an hour late. We ejected the people who had been squatting on our berths, and soon afterwards, we were brought clean sheets and fresh pillowcases in a lovely non-plastic bag:
And the journey started. Our carriage was compact but adequately equipped. We were still excited at this point:
But Sue got fed up very quickly as we sat at various junctions for hours and hours. Our journey? We left Satna at 1.00 pm and arrived in Varanasi after 10.00 pm in the fog and cold, some two and a half hours late. We won’t be rushing to do another train journey unless it’s essential. (And those of our enthusiastic Indian trainlovers – no, we have no sense of romance or fun as far as this is concerned!)
We’ve been on quite a few trains. Not sure about the romance but rarely this late. We’ve even been from Satna where we used the footover bridge but our porters and our suitcases crossed the track.
Lateness not explained ( never apologise, never explain) and not treated as at all surprising by other passengers. I’m not really suited to these kind of journeys having no capacity to breathe deeply and relax into the experience – I just keep asking questions like ‘ why are we just sitting here in this deserted station in the dark?’ to which poor M, of course, has no answers..
It all looks a great deal better than the films….
Never having been, I’d expected hard bench seats and tea being served in tin mugs?
I’m sure you can find trains with hard benches ( now moulded plastic) though not the tin mugs – there were tea vendors but I don’t entirely trust the water used. We were in a relatively luxurious sleeper class I think.
Oh dear, not sure it was our experience that inspired yours… we have had lovely times on trains in the past although our most recent attempt, from Kolkata to somewhere I’ve forgotten after Xmas, was a write off. The train we had booked on was cancelled and all other trains were fully booked with 250 people on the waiting list. So we had to fly – no fun at all.
Flying – not green I know – sounds just fine to me! Flight would have been 1 hour and we were on the road/ train for 13!
So I will remove train journeys to Varanasi out of my wish list!
I think you can probably deprioritise this particular experience, Nicky!
I loved the trains but I was in my 30’s then! We were about six hours late into Varanasi so think yourselves lucky!
Thanks, Cate – I’m now making an extra effort to think positively ( coulda been worse, arrived before midnight, train stayed on its tracks …)
Hmm. I’m struggling a bit to understand the romance of this – at any age. Call me unadventurous… But thanks for trying it!
As our slogan goes, ‘ we travel so you don’t need to’ – happy to be of service…
Hope you now understand why that train journey in Vietnam filled me up with so much anxiety !!
We completely do, Nikhil! You said at the time that you had a form of train trauma – understand that now completely! That combination of nothing seemingly happening at all followed by moments of blind panic and pushing! Sxx
How different from your from you earlier train journey! Intrigued by the corpulent gentleman (pregnant lady?) on the other side of the aisle from Sue – so it seems you didn’t even have a comopartment to yourselves,
He was very corpulent with a huge round tummy that barely fitted on his berth. I woke at some point to find him trying to charge his mobile on the berth above me AND he broke our curtains ( trying to close them I think). He was friendly but large and did indeed look as though he was about to give birth when lying on his back…
And he snored so loudly! And when he wasn’t snoring, he was watching television on his phone – I suspect the inauguration of the Ayodhya Temple by the sound of things. We were glad for earplugs (Sue) and earphones (me).
That’s the train we’d taken overnight to Satna last spring! It’d left somewhere in Chhattisgarh at midnight and our entry had required a nifty musical berths involving half a dozen or so people, by a very efficient man with a tablet. We arrived an hour or so late, I think – not bad – and we also adore those brown paper packages of fresh laundry! Of course it’s an experience any Indiaphile must go through and the great thing is, you did arrive in Varanasi, which I went to in 1975 and it was the first time ever I felt I had a glimpse of something truly spiritual. I hope it’s still as magical and sublime and that Sue’s finally managed to get warm.
There’s no question that Varanasi is a very special place – that very Indian mixture of spirituality and life going on around it. I was certainly struck by the every day atmosphere of the cremation site – so public and so weighted with ritual. And yes, I did get warm – our friend Nikhil had contacted the hotel and ensured that they’d put a proper heater in the room!
Does it seem you need lots of normal trains experiences to get some good ones?
Hmm, define normal and good?!