It Begins (India, part 5)

This post is part of a month long trip I just took to India. If you’d like to start from the beginning, please click here.

It begins! We’re into the wild today, first order of business is trying to book a sleeper train to Varanasi. The hotel tries to book them for us for a fee, we say no thanks, we’ll go to the train station ourselves. The cabs out front of the hotel try to charge us too much to take us to the train station, we say no thanks, we’ll walk. We’re in it now, today we’re adventurers.

We walk out of the gated walls of the 4 star hotel and into the street. Already this feels good, shedding the insulating, protective layers that keep us from feeling the cheap, dirty thrill of travel. Maybe today we get in an accident. Maybe today we get robbed. Maybe today nothing bad happens to us at all and we meet a lot of helpful, curious people. No way to know by sticking to the expensive, “safe” options.

We ask a man for directions to the bus stop, he recommends we take a tuktuk for a few cents. A good recommendation it turns out since it’s far, and hot, and very fun. Teeth rattle in skulls as we bounce down the road, we pass animals and huts and we’re three big dudes with backpacks in a tiny motorized cart and the day is silly and alive and exciting. By the end of the month we will have taken dozens of tuktuks and seen many far crazier sights, so it’s hard to capture looking back the rush of doing it for the first time, how wild we feel doing something that will soon become so routine. A joy of travel, I suppose, that we get to experience moments like this over and over, the thrill of the brain transitioning the unknown to known.

The tuktuk leaves us at a public bus, which we are lucky to get seats on. By the end of the ride it is completely packed to the point of men hanging out the door, with more people still clambering to get on. A squishy belly leans on me, like having one of those yoga balls pressed to your face for 40 minutes. Personal boundaries change in India. The ticket collector pushes through the crowd, a gambler’s fan of folded bills stick like peacock feathers out from between his knuckles, making change over peoples’ heads.

We are treated to the sight of a man jumping on behind another man, grabbing the bars around him and spooning him down the city street. Tristan nudges Ben and me and soon we all have our heads out the window, cracking up at their predicament. The inner man becomes unhappy with this new arrangement and soon the two are fighting, pushing and shoving each other, all while hanging one handed out the bus door. Unreal.

The bus takes us to a ferry, which takes us to the train station. At the ferry entrance there is a man who takes our tickets, he rips them and the pieces drift down atop a snowy white pile of discarded tickets, ankle deep.

The train station is another kettle of fish, we get passed around for 40  minutes just trying to find the ticket booth. Eventually we do, then wait in one line only to be told we have to wait in the other line before we can wait in this line. Very handy to have three of us, we can all wait in different lines and race. Also, everyone in India knows exactly what they’re doing when they arrive at the counter, and try to shove their money in through the window past our heads. Us, having no idea what we’re doing, get completely smoked by this tactic, and at least a dozen sales are made before we combine forces, using all three of our 6’+ bodies to block the window long enough to frantically buy tickets for that evening. We book Non-AC sleeper, the cheapest class you can get. We have heard horror stories about it- stinky, hot, stolen bags, 8 people to a bed, fighting to reserve your bench (thanks, Shantaram) etc etc. But in for a penny, in for a pound. At worst it’s only…14 hours of hell. Just a quick 14 hours, right? Oh and we just ate street food for the first time on the way here. So, maybe just a quick 14 hours with horrible diarrhea. Ah, shit.  What have we gotten ourselves into?

As it turns out, it’s great. Naturally, all the stories are unfounded, or at least if it is uncomfortable it makes us feel brave and resilient and stoic, and that’s even better than comfort. We sleep with our valuables in one bag as a pillow, spooning the other bag locked to the railing. I would love to move one of them, but this early in the trip I don’t trust it elsewhere. We pay for our miserliness with sleep, but I’m so excited by the whole thing I don’t sleep much anyways and keep a constant recording of the nights events.

1/30- 12:13am Nearly just lost a shoe in the squat toilet. I’d been wearing it like a slipper, almost a costly mistake. 

1/30 – 2:57am- Look guy, no one wants your chai tea right now. Why are the lights on? A country of mysteries.

1/30- 6:00am- The car is still asleep now, minimal talking and spitting and coughing and shouting. Thankfully our lower bunkmates have changed, we had a couple of old ladies that came in the middle of the night talking and giggling like school girls, plus they were horrible snorers. “Can it, ya old bags!”
It’s very cold, the outside door is kept open next to the toilets and the brisk night air runs back through the cabin. A completely acceptable trade, the alternative smell of 14 hours of stale urine would make this ride hell. Train horns blast every few minutes, and we feel the power through the walls and into our bones as they pass, other sleepers charging through  the night.

When the car is awake there is the constant soundtrack of hocking, dislodging and disgorging phlegm out the window, music playing on phones, people talking. At night it is cold, and lights flash on and off inches from my face (top bunk) as people enter and exit at all hours.

Now it’s quiet, mostly just the sound of the train. I can smell one of those sweet cigarettes they smoke here, maybe other smells but my nose isn’t so good. Maybe a blessing. Men stream by constantly during the day selling snacks and drinks, so far I only recognize chai and coffee. They each have their own way of singing/ calling out what they’re selling, little jingles repeated over and over down the train. The bunks are about 5’10″, minus our two backpacks, so sleep is… cozy. My feet stick into the halls and are occasionally poked by vendors so they can pass with their baskets full of food on their heads. I learn while sleeping to tuck them in when I hear one coming. “Chayachayachayacoffeeeee”. It is cold, I have all my layers on to sleep. Going to Darjeeling would have been miserable, it’s supposed to be similar to Canada’s temperatures up there now. I feel well prepared for this though, for once. Not as well as Tristan, who I now watch sleep comfortably in his sleeping bag. ‘Comfortably.’ Sun should be up soon, I’m going to lean out the door and watch the world clatter by. You can do that here, because it’s India. 

I hang on until my hands freeze and I fear for my grip failing. It’s worth it. Hanging out a train door, watching the small villages come to life- magic.