On Wednesday and Thursday of last week it was public holiday time due the the Ganesh Chaturthi festival. Its a bit of a party to celebrate one of the many Hindu gods. Ganesha is sort of a man with an elephant's head and is supposed to bring good fortune for those travelling, and when you buy new things, is a remover of barriers, and generally anything else that you want. Jen thought she should take a few days off and we decided to head to Mysore for a break from Bangalore.
As its about 5 hours drive to Mysore from here, we thought we should try the train, so we took the Shatabdhi Express. The Shatabdhi Express trains are the pride of the Indian railway system and designated "super fast". In reality this means that they are not pulled by a bullock that's being whipped mercilessly by some toothless guy wearing a table cloth for a skirt.
In all fairness though, it was quite a good experience. The main railway station in Bangalore is "Majestic Station". Named by a bloke from the Council with a sense of humour, it's a fleshpot of body odour, with beggars lying around amongst the travellers, prostrate with boredom, while awaiting whatever metal cattle wagon takes them to the next less than satisfying experience in their unfulfilling lives.
We fight through the melee and eventually find out what platform our train leaves from. So, we walk down the "majestic" red paan stained stairs, along the filthy "majestic" subway onto the foul smelling "majestic" platform, where we patiently await our train looking at the "majestic" piles of shit on the tracks being washed away "majestically" by a Dalit with a hose.
The train arrives and we board. The only problem with the Indian railway system is twofold. Firstly, you can't just arrive and get on the train. You have to book in advance. An hour or two before the train is due to leave, a list is printed out of all the passengers' names and dates of birth and stuck on the outside of the relevant carriage, showing your seat reservation numbers. This is great as you can play the age game with your travelling companion, guessing the ages of the passengers and seeing who is closest to the right answer by comparing your guesstimate with the list once you get off.
The second issue is that each train has about 83 classes of travel ranging, on our journey, from only a few pence return to about £15 each for the best class. It is a bit confusing, as if you book first class you'll be travelling with a family of lepers being held hostage by a troop of monkeys with flick-knives. There is third class (ie the roof), second class, first class, sleeper class, AC chair class, AC executive chair class, First class, AC 3-tier class, AC 2-tier class and First AC chair class. Westerners will mostly always travel in the best class as it is so cheap in comparison to our own railway systems.
Here are a couple of pics of Jen enjoying the best the Shatabdhi has to offer!
The train was a bit like a plane in that you get fed with food that is like aeroplane food, only worse. There are toilets on board. I did need to go on the way there - it must have been the hot water that had ketchup in it masquerading as tomato soup. Imagine my disappointment on finding that it was a squat toilet. It's hard enough for blokes to have a wee on the 7-35 from Northampton to London, but just imagine trying it on the lurching Indian railways using a toilet which is basically a hole in the ground.
I stood and looked at it wondering what the best approach would be. To stand or squat? mmmmmmmm. A dynamic risk assessment revealed the danger of squatting. My balance isn't great at the best of times and the thought of the potentials that existed for disaster was too great. So standing it was. I hadn't thought it through. Trying to aim at an open hole at foot level wearing open sandals and no socks was quite a challenge, and one that I failed miserably. "Never mind. I'll just kind of rinse my foot off when I flush the hole" I naively thought. I didn't really think that through either given my track record of balancing on one leg. With my foot now firmly lodged inside the hole and the water trying to flush it out onto the track I gave up all pretence of dignity. I managed to wrench it free and was now standing with one foot and shoe completely soaking wet.
Well, I clearly can't go back to first class looking like this, so how am I going to dry it off?
It's amazing with me how things seem like great ideas at the time, but ultimately turn out to be clearly not thought through.
I was struggling trying to get my foot out through the window. It was slightly higher than I could comfortably reach, so had to climb up on the wash basin plinth, wedge myself into the small gap, half turned over facing the floor with my leg stretched out behind me, and foot through the window. Quite proud of my ingenious foot drying solution, I was enjoying the moment when another train flashed past, almost severing my foot in the process. The lurch of our own train along with the shock and precarious balancing position meant that I landed on the floor with a crash.
I picked myself up, and dusted myself off and left the toilet, heading back to my seat. En route I had to pass some locals who were standing in between the carriages, leaning out of the open doors looking up the length of the train. Obviously they would have seen my foot sticking out of the toilet window. They stared at me open-mouthed as I wished them "Good morning". I wonder what they were thinking.
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