Travel Stories

Bad Luck with Train, Good Luck with Bus. March 2, 2005, Shimla, India, by Xerxes Marduk

Part 1

Shaking the night guard awake at five in the morning, and getting him to unlock the door of the guesthouse in Delhi was familiar territory. I had done exactly the same thing a month before, when I was catching another train out of Delhi in the early hours of the morning. As I walked down the dark, silent streets to the main road to catch an auto rickshaw to the New Delhi train station I felt like I was reliving an old dream, one of those ones that you keep having over and over. I couldn't quite distinguish the difference between this time and last time, except that last time I had two beautiful girls at my side and this time I was alone.

Going to the New Delhi train station was unfamiliar ground to me, and this is where I made my first mistake. The rickshaw driver, muffled against the cold by numerous blankets and scarves, asked me which side of the train station I wanted to be dropped off at. From my previous excursion to the train station I had not gleamed that there were two sides to it. So in my ignorance and sleepy confusion I said ether one was fine. I got let off in unfamiliar surroundings and hoped I would get lucky and stumble upon my train by pure chance. I looked around for a TV screen that would tell me what platform my train was departing from. Not seeing any thing of this sort I spotted a uniformed man sitting in a booth marked, Service. I showed him my ticket and asked what platform the train left from. He put on a pair of glasses, glanced at my ticket and said "platform eight."

When I got to platform eight I heard over the loud speakers that train number 4095, my train, was arriving next on platform eight. Great, I thought. This had been easy.

Shortly a train arrived at platform eight and there was the usual frenzied rush to board by the masses of people crowding the platform. This instinct I believe is learned by long experience with taking trains in India; one never knows for how long the train will be stopped at the platform, or if it will even come to a complete stop at all. If the latter is the case passengers are expected to jump on and off the still moving train or get left behind with no one feeling sorry for them. So there I was the only white face in the crowd of thousands, pushing my way onto the train with everybody else. Having no idea which carriage was which I contented myself with at least finding the right seat number and figured I had about a one in ten chance of being on the right carriage. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable tap on my shoulder by someone who had this seat in THIS carriage.

It came about 30 minutes later and woke me up from a light sleep I had drifted into. The man and I examined our tickets and he told me I was in carriage S6, I wanted S3. Down that way, he gestured with his hand. Hauling my bags behind me I got back off the train and hoped back on a few carriages further down. The train was still at the same station, at the same platform as it had been half an hour ago. So after that mad rush everybody was waiting patiently for it to leave, another lesson to learn about he Indian railway system.

Just as the sun had begun to rise the train started to move. Only ten more hours and I will be in Shimla, 2200m high in the Himalayas, I thought. Buoyed by this pleasant image I drifted off to sleep once again. At 6.30 I was awoken by the ticket collector.

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