3 cheers for 2AC - Hip Hip…Horray!!

Indian Railways and its associated catering arm is the world’s biggest utilities employer.  In a country of apparent chaos, its smartly uniformed staff keeps the immense network relocating millions of people around the clock in varying degrees of comfort.  I arrived in Gujarat well rested, courtesy of a 21 hour journey from Bhopal executed in great comfort.  Some time ago I elected to only travel long distances on the train in the 1AC and 2AC classes.  There are often only eight beds per train in 1AC (the premium class) and as these are generally monopolised by the government, I mostly spend my rail time in the 2AC compartment.

2AC is a spacious air conditioned class where the carriages are split into about 10 curtained bays of 4 with individually curtained bunks running along the “corridor”.  All bunks convert into capacious seating during the day.  In addition to blankets and pillows, on joining the train, each passenger is presented with a large brown paper bag containing crispy white sheets, and often a small towel.  Once furnished with their essentials, new passengers are politely identity checked normally by a suited, stately gentleman of later years against the computerised booking system and required to show their ticket but naturally flashing an e-ticket on your blackberry is “no problem ma’am”.

Timely meal orders (Veg or Non-Veg being the choice) are taken along the way by the sprightly young carriage attendants who then deliver the packaged meals piping hot from the Railway Catering facilities at key stations.  This is catering for the masses, it is not the best restaurant food but it is tasty enough and, at 40-80 rupees per meal, staggeringly convenient.  I am astounded by the ease and efficiency of it all, and my joy in observing that alone sometimes prevents me from popping onto the platform or hailing a waller to buy snacks and goodies along the way.

...what buying an e-ticket saves you from!

When not engaged in eating, sleeping or washing, the ubiquitous Chai Waller is always on hand to serve passengers a caffeine and sugar hit whilst they avail themselves of the extensive appliance charging facilities.  Any need to queue for the loo post-chai is eliminated by the electronic “lavatory engagement” indicators and on many trains toilet paper is even provided in the clean western toilets!

I do not believe that travelling 2AC is selling-out on the budget travel experience because when the air conditioning gets a little chilly, which it does, you can still step out to the sink area, fling open the train door and sit on the step or hang out whilst filling your boots with hot, dusty and rustic Asian train travel.

By Indian standards, 2AC is an expensive way to travel and that has another great advantage for the likes of me; the fellow passengers generally speak great English, are very interesting and well educated and also use laptops so do not feel the need to gather round mine in excitement!  It all bodes very well for a safe, jolly, middle-class outing and I salute here and now all of the helpful, funny, clever, charming, sweet and hardworking students, families and business people that I have had the pleasure to meet in 2AC!!

Bhuj Bus

I don't take photos from buses because they always disappoint, as these did,

...but it was oh so photogenic

Both ends of the candle burnt...

Here lies the recipe for ending up in bed with "the belly" and chronic lactic acid burn on the very day of the big Shiva festival you came here to be part of...

• Overnight in a non AC carriage (first class though) on the Kollam-Madurai Passer
• Check into the Madurai Railway Retiring rooms (0530)
• Scrub off train dirt with new ayurvedic exfoliating pad

• Eat Dosa by South tower of Sri Meenakshi temple
• Visit Temple (Tamil Nadu's temple-architecture highlight)
• Take loads of quite psychadelic photos (displayed throughout this post)

Get very bitten trying to meditate in temple

Flee from mosquitos

Buy and eat a few indian sweets

 

Feel guilty about eating so many Indian sweets

Eat Idly near the bus stand

Shower again

Check out of Railway retiring rooms

Take the 1230 bus to the mountains

Eat thali at the lunch stop just because it looked so good

Arrive Kodaikanal and check into the Methodist Church (great value with tartan blankets)

Walk to youth hostel and and enquire about trekking

Meet with trekking guide and a French chap looking for more trekkers

Agree to trek with them to Munnar starting at 0830 the next morning

Eat locally grown and made chocolate whilst looking at the light fade over the lake

Decide to eat more chocolate in the morning - especially the butterscotch flavour

Eat tomato and onion uttapam for dinner (almost a wheat-free pizza!)

Repack for the trek and onward luggage

Go to bed

Wake up regularly noting that one tartan blanket is insufficient at 2500m!

Trek at lightning speed with two aerobically fit men for two days (see following post)

Grab a shower in French Chap's hotel (thank you Jean Luc)

Jump on the 4pm connection bus

Eat egg dosa at very busy street stall (AMAZINGLY GOOD)

Change to the nightbus at 9pm

Climb off the bus at 0415 godknowswhere (near Vellore apparently)

Get overcharged for a 500m auto ride to the bus depot

Take first bus to Tiruvanamalai at 0430

• Try not to cry when the autodriver takes you to the wrong place and tries to hike his fee
• Find a room before everywhere opens without an auto
• Accidentally drink a cup of tap water because you're so tired

  

1 Strike, 3 States, 2 Worlds

I had a bonefide train reservation for one of India's reputedly most scenic routes which leaves Jagdalpur (in Chattissgarh) for Vishakapatnam on the east coast of Andra Pradesh everyday at 9.50am.  Not only did I have a ticket but the only ticket I could buy was in first class (again), so anticipating luxury I had charged my ipod and was looking forward to kicking back with a few bhajis and the odd chai whilst I wound my way down from the plateaus amongst the peaks of the Western Ghats. 

The state of Chattissgarh had other ideas though.  Jagdalpur train station was seriously decked out for a political rally, it had bunting strung between its palm trees, plastic chairs all over its platforms and ...for one day only the state railways were on strike!  I have no idea if these occurances were connected but with my future chances of making train reservations in mind I thanked my lucky stars that Chattissgarh only has two lines neither of which I would be needing to book again too soon.

If I was gutted not to be able to enjoy my luxury train ride, Frank from Belgium was relieved about the strike.  Frank didn't have a reservation and may well have had to face the full 9 hours  in unreserved second class ...stood up or if lucky he'd have perched on a wooden bench bwith umpteen fellow passengers.  To be clear, last time I travelled in unreserved 2nd class, a pretty young Indian lady who was incredulous at my presence the presumptively enquired "excuse me madam but why are you travelling in this compartment when money is not an issue for you?".  Cheap it is, and fun for a while too ...but not for 9 hours.  Regardless, we took our mixed emotions down to the bus stand and sought provisions for the apparently "only 5 hour", "300km" public bus trip over the mountains.

In developing countries (and Turkey), when a bus loads up with passengers at the bus stand, one must never assume that the bus is therefore full.  For some unfathomable reason, about 50 metres outside the bus stand/station/stop, there will be at least one additional passenger waiting on the road, I can only assume that it might save a penny or two on the ticket.  Another anomally is the fact that passengers here think that getting onto the bus is the be-all-and-end-all.  It has not hit them that allowing other passengers off the bus first will be far easier and will stop their children being maimed in the crush.

Fortunately for humankind there are scheduled stops during these epic passenger swapping journeys on which the westerners and the driver/conductor team seem to be the only fools to take the entire trip.  These stops are fine for men but do require a "sod it if I don't just wee here I will explode" attitude from the ladies but that aside they always have chai, snack and meal options.  At Jaypore, just below the peaks, we stopped just outside the bus stand where a couple of friendly lads mixed the nicest mixed fruit lassi (yoghurt, ice and fresh fruit) I have ever had.

Between the stops, our bus driver heaved the super-wide bus through some wonderfully decorated homes and villages.  The tribal villages of Chattisgarh gave way to the tribal and non-tribal villages of Orissa.  On both sides of the  state border the stunning tribal villages seemed to have selected their location based upon the most beautiful, wide and shady tree, however there was a sizemic shift in the non-tribal architecture as we crossed into Orissa state.  This shift was from non-descript concrete homes to indivisual, intricate, psychadelically painted narrow houses with external spiral staircases.  As the bus churned through the main roads, either side of me tiny streets burrowed deep into the towns flickering with low turquoise mud huts and skinny rainbow homes, dotted with luminous ladies doing the whole lot of stuff that women do everywhere.  I will most definately make a purposeful trip back to Orissa!

Somewhere in Orissa we left the 750m plateau for dust and ascended some serious hairpins in our very wide bus, the width of which, by this point had become a point of fascination ...it was laid out as a two seats, an aisle and then three seats all which were full size rather than being tiny little indian-sized-seats, but the roads were still one single track of 2m wide tarmac with rubbly edges for use when something else needed  to share the tarmac and we didn't fit them at all.  I digress, so we climbed and then, once we were as high as we were going we rumbled through some blown out hilltops into a range of forested mountain peaks.  It was stunning, beautifully  terraced paddy fields undulated in and out of the folds of the peaks for at least an hour before we began the heady descent passing wrecked trucks whose drivers must have run out of amphetamine and finally given in to the sleep they were so deprived of.  We clung tentatively to the edge of the mountain range as we dropped right down to sea level so the views over the cheshire-flat plains were outstanding.  Thankfully it did not get dark until we were safely down in Andra Pradesh and the road to Vishakapatnam was flat and even, in fact having meditated for a while I opened my eyes and we were on a dual carriageway!!  I had been so remote for so long that when we reached Vishakapatnam's bustling city centre my eyes were on stalks, there were giant lit billboards (like you see in Bangkok) traffic lights and big glass-fronted shops with sale-banners, advertised discounts,  AC and mood lighting, to be honest I didn't even see this stuff in Delhi and I barely make a UK city centre so I was genuinely wide eyed and giggly about the new world that I had arrived in!

NB

I don't bother trying to capture views out of windows, it never works so I apologise for all this writing and not a lot of anything else, but I had to do something to sit purposefully in this gorgeous restaurant all night on my own!

Am I a moron given how much of Asia I have travelled in during my lifetime for not realising that "paddy" meant "rice" before now? My grandad wil be turning in his grave if they're online up there yet!

Delly's Belly leaving Delhi

During the night I felt a familiar tenderising of gut and for what could have been an hour my mind flitted between all too vivid multi-sensory memories of the train's toilet and concerted efforts to pretend I was not really feeling any form of liquification within. These agonising moments were punctuated by paranoia that the baby below me would start to scream on top of Uncle's monumental snores in the next upper birth. Then I had a vision, a vision of a lady stepping gracefully out into a non descript European city with a face of sublime peace. This was not the look of enlightenment, nor that of an awakened mind, but the look of relief that immodium can bring ...and like a flash the strapline of that very advert came to me, "almost instant relief". I thanked my lucky stars that I read those magazines at the hairdressers and resolved the problem from my medicine pack ...almost instantly!!