Travel Stories

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

Part 3

I stood with six or seven others by the toilets since it was the most undesirable place and therefore the only available place to stand. For an hour I stood protectively over my bags and got very unpleasant blasts of raw sewage odor every minute or two when someone opened the bathroom door. I closed my eyes and drifted off to a state of relative restfulness and comfort among the people packed in around me trying to find the same.

An hour later the train arrived back in the New Delhi train station. I made my way to the refunds and cancellations counter and there met a chap about my own age from France, who was waiting for change from the ticket counter for some tickets he had bought. The ticket man, who was also the refund man, apparently had no small change which to pay ether of us back, so he threw a 50 rupee bill across the counter at us and said "him twenty five, you twenty five." Turning his problem into our problem of how to split up the 50 rupee bill. "Buy some tea down stairs." He said cheerfully, and shooed us away as the next person in line was served.

Over paper cups of steaming tea I told the Frenchman about my mishap on the train this morning. It was his first time taking Indian trains, and he asked me how he could be sure he would get on the right one. I thought about this for a moment and in the bustling New Delhi train station told him, "Don't trust anyone." We shook hands and said good buy and good luck and went our separate ways. I really hoped he would have better luck with his trains today than I had.

It was 9am and I had been up since 4:45. In that time I had come full circle back to where I had started. But I had a plan. I could ether spend all day in Delhi and taking the night train to Shimla, or try my luck with the government busses. Since I didn't fancy another train adventure anytime soon I decided to try and take a bus to Shimla though I had no idea when they left or how much they cost.

I took an auto rickshaw o the ISBT, which I decoded to mean Inter State Bus Terminal. When I arrived I was immediacy accosted by a tout who directed me to a private bus booking office where I would get a ticket at twice the price as a government bus and he would get a big commission. I broke away from that trap and walked back to the official ticket counter and asked about a bus to Shimla. "Counter forty." A bored looking man drinking tea and reading a newspaper told me. I went to counter forty and asked about a bus to Shimla. "There is one at 12:30, but there might be one sooner." Another man reading a paper told me. I asked how to get a ticket for an earlier bus and was told to go to counter seven. Finding counter seven I heard before I saw a group of men standing outside a bus yelling, "Shimla, Shimla, Shimla." I wondered about the point of this, as if they would drum up enthusiasm from someone who was on the verge of deciding weather or not to take a ten-hour bus ride to Shimla today. It worked out perfectly for me though. I painlessly and cheaply bought a ticket on the direct bus to Shimla that was scheduled to depart in ten minutes. My luck has apparently taken a turn for the better. I was soon to find out how much better it could become.

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