Delhi Night Train

Photo: Elephant Festival Jaipur

We visited the starting of the elephant festival in Jaipur. We had some time to kill before we saw any elephants. We walked down a side street, all commotion and noise. As we walked a chanting procession passed by bearing a litter for a dead man. He looked quite young.

We caught a night train from Dehli. We entered the station and had a Pepsi in the refreshment room until they kicked us out. Apparently no waiting in the refreshment room. We waited below a reader board until our train platform number was displayed. Train 2802, the Purshott Express. A man with a badly injured right eye squatted before us, put his hands in prayer position and asked for some rupees. The hall was filled with people. The two dozen lower class booking windows had lines thirty deep. Dozens of people were spiraled around on the floor. Hard to say if they were waiting there or living there.

At the platform, Platform 4, it was full of people and luggage. We picked a dusty spot on the concrete and sat on our luggage, waiting. Scurrying around the train wheels and all along the tracks were scores of rats, some running up on the platform. A friendly dog followed me around as I went to find our names on a posted list. I must look like an easy mark. A blind man came taping his stick and holding a can in his hand and repeating something bizarre. He bumped into our luggage and then went around and bumped into something else. The loud speakers were continuously making announcements, none of which I could understand.

The train arrived. Sheri was worried because there was a 100-yard long line in front of our coach, but they were getting on the general seating coach next to ours. Our 2 tier AC class coach was fine. People in our couch were chatting on cell phones and texting. By the time we pulled out of the station the people in general seating were hanging out of the doors. Overlooking the grime and the cockroaches and the occasional mouse our 17-hour train ride from Delhi to Gaya was comfortable.

We arrived at the dusty train station in Gaya, Bihar in the heat of the afternoon. The tuk- tuk stand was unusually quiet because of the ‘Holi” holiday. We were quoted ten times the normal rate for a ride to Bodhgaya by grimy men covered in the colors of Holi. We attempted negotiations and waited around. Nearby a boy with a crippled leg was having a wrestling match with a boy with one arm. They rolled in the dust. The crippled boy got the upper hand by smacking down hard with his crutches. Cripple boy got up and ran by us and then savagely hit a lame dog. Cripple boy came up behind us and started to say something, and then something more in a very course way. His face had so much color from Holi that it had blended to a muddy dusty black. The crowd laughed. Sheri closed the negotiations for two and a half times the normal rate and we slipped away.

The tuk-tuk went on one back road to another odd lane to a bumpy track and back again. Bodhgaya? I asked. Yeah the driver said. He was avoiding the main road because he thought his tuk-tuk might be damaged by out of control Holi revelry. We arrived at our guesthouse in Bodhgaya just in time for Curtis to run to the toilet.