In Transit
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
1
78
272
Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Delhi,
India
Sunday, December 23, 2007
But all in all this particular bus ride was uneventful, and we didn't even have to worry about where to get off because the last stop was in Delhi. Yay!
So we arrived in Delhi around 06:00 and paid our auto-rickshaw driver what we later found out was way too much money to take us to the New Delhi train station. Here we were told what to do and where to go, even though we said "No, thank you" and "We don't need help" about a thousand times. You see, the magical, helpful, simple tourist office opens at 8. And for some reason, even though there are people sleeping all over the floor downstairs and generally hanging out, it's unimaginable that we could sit outside the magical tourist office and wait for it to open. I don't know if people are really trying to be helpful and think that we're not like everyone else and can't sit and wait or if they just want money.
We sat and read for the couple hours until the office opened and a bunch of tourists scrambled in, purchased our ticket without a hitch, and escaped the train station to the craziness of the Main Bazaar. After declining several offers of both transport and housing, we found a hole in the wall restaurant and sat down to a yummy breakfast in which hashbrowns turned out to actually be some sort of interesting potatoes and other vegetables in a dark curry sauce. Then internet, dear friends. It is boring to mention, but I do because it was there that we found we were late to catch our train. So we hurried back down the street and into the station, only to discover that our train had been delayed by half an hour. This was really not a surprise because, after listening to dozens of announcements while waiting for our last train, we had come to the conclusion that the natural state of Indian trains is to be late. The platform was hugely overpopulated, but the rats seemed to keep to themselves this time, so we sat in the crowd and waited.
The train arrived and chaos ensued. The numbers of the cars were chalked onto various places on the sides of the train, so we had an interesting time trying to decipher and decide if we were reading the number for this train or if it might have been residual. Meanwhile the masses of people were practically (some times truly) running down the platform, pushing and shoving anyone and everyone to be the first on the train. I think we discovered in Amritsar that the reason for this is that everyone on the waitlist gets a seat on a first-come-first-served basis, but there are also the people who just don't have seats and stand in the aisle or...wherever. It's a little more than ridiculous, and I was getting cranky.
We found our car and our seats and made people move and move their stuff all over when someone informed Travis that we were actually on car G9 and that G10 was farther down the way. And are the cars next to each other? No. The cars have to be separated by cars with a different designation just to make life difficult. So we endured still more pushing and shoving, and this time it was possibly worse because we had to pass by the stairs where everyone who had just gotten off the train was trying to go up while everyone trying to get on the train was getting in the way. Traffic jam.
Finally we found our real seats. Travis got pushed into the latrines while I tried to figure out why there were three old ladies sitting in our seats. They moved their stuff around and motioned for me to sit, but I just sort of stared because there was only one seat and Travis and I definitely had two. When Travis escaped the latrine I pointed to him and the seat, and then myself and another seat, but the ladies smiled somewhat condescendingly at me and motioned farther down the car. Given that we were speaking different languages, I have no idea what she was saying, although I think she had some idea of what I wanted. Finally the man who had told us we were in the wrong car stepped in and linguistically cleared matters up. Turns out the women didn't have reserved seats at all. Wonderful. We thank the random stranger for helping us.
So for the first couple hours of the cramped and loud train ride, there could not possibly have been anyone grumpier than Erin. I could complain up a storm, but it really all comes down to this: "Why can't everyone just do what I want?" Because, you know, I am always right about everything. But I am constantly reminded by the journal that Laura bought for us as a going away present that "When you travel, remembe that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable." I hunkered down and read and listened to music and slowly unwound. Travis wasn't a happy bunny either, but he doesn't get all wound up like I do and was therefore better able to just go with it.
At one point the little old man in the enormous winter coat sitting next to me got up and moved, and in his place sat a slim young man not wearing an enormous coat, so we all got just a little more space to sit down. I think Travis was particularly happy, since he now got to have all of his butt on the seat rather than only half. At another point I asked the man across from me (who had a very sharp looking turban, and I really wanted to ask how he wrapped all his hair in it every day, but I didn't) where we were. Travis and I never have any idea where we are. Whereever it was it wasn't Amritsar, which was our destination, and I learned that we would get to Amritsar two hours late. Surprise, surprise. We had a short chat since I'd opened the dialogue, but the real conversation didn't begin till we reached Ludhiana.
The slim man sitting next to me left our car for almost the entire stop, about 20 minutes, and when he came back it took me only moments to realize that he was seriously upset and trying to hide it. But I just couldn't let him be all upset by himself, so I leaned into him and quietly asked if he was alright. In an abnormal display of candor, he said, "No." A brief silence. "Is there anything I can do?"
He wiped his eyes and told me that a member of his family had just died, his father's brother, and his family waited to tell him till just now (his uncle died yesterday, you see) because he was in the middle of his school exams. It was really very sad. I don't know how it goes in India, but I think that sometimes all you need is a little sympathetic human contact, so I patted his arm while, because I had gone and started something, the two guys seated across from us started speaking to him in his own language, which I thought was good. Eventually we lapsed into a somber silence.
I guess that because I'd been...unreserved...it was easy to strike up a conversation a few minutes later. The two men across from us, Mandeep and Gulshan, were resident dentists in Delhi and had gone to University together up at Amritsar. We asked them dozens of questions about being dentists and their schooling and what they were going to do after it was all over, and they asked us even more questions about the US (Gulshan is going there for a 6 month specialist residency in maxillofacial dentistry, you see) and what we thought of India. And they were somewhat surprised that we had known about Amritsar since we were in the US. I'd been playing cards earlier, and my shuffling skills never go unremarked, so we pulled out the cards and played some very bad card tricks. All in all we had a good laugh, and when they had to get off the train I was back to thinking life was good.
In the meantime, there were four children who had certainly noticed us earlier, but I think our animated conversation made them comfortable enough to approach us. So those last two hours to Amritsar they sat with us (their parents were quite content to leave them with us) and asked us questions about everything ("Do you know the Great Kali?") and taught us a couple highly entertaining and very simple card games. I never won once. One little boy latched on to Travis and asked him zillions of lisping questions while his older brother looked on knowingly and sometimes rolled his eyes. Then there was a little (actually not so little, but not so old either) girl with a 6-year-old brother who was just way to shy to ask us any questions, so he mostly scrunched up his face and then covered it with his hands. The girl, Kajal, had lots of questions for me ("Are you veg or non-veg?"), and whenever I asked her a question she did that specifically Indian head wobble-nod that takes a second to register because it is just so not American.
When we finally got off the train in Amritsar, I think both Travis and I were happy with the whole world. And then we got scammed twice in the next fifteen minutes. Ahh, India.
Erin
