Nightmare Train Ride

When the words “Indian trains” are being discussed the main topic easily lands on how crowded they are or how to get a ticket where one can enjoy a +24 hours ride without feeling uncomfortable. Just by googling “Trains India” the window will show some astonishing and interesting pictures of trains more looking like a gigantic monster cyborg – a puzzled mix between man and machine.

Well, India is a big country, but a bit overpopulated, and together with the poor infrastructure it sometimes gets a bit “crowded” on streets or inside trains. If you aspire to find a very crowded place buying the cheapest train ticket you can find in some Non AC car is a fantastic choice. As my research says there are 8 different options regarding tickets that correlates with price and comfortability level:

• First AC (Best and most expensive)
• Second AC
• Third AC
• 3 AC Economy
• AC Chair Car
• First Non-AC
• Sleeper Class
• Second Seating (Worst and less expensive)

Unfortunately I never had the chance to travel by train but one of my friends had a very unique experience by taking the cheapest ticket going as a hardcore local traveller. I have been privileged to share his story of his first Indian train ride. It looks to me as he took the adventurous Second Seating ticket, excellent choice.

A few days ago I made a trip from a city called Calicut to a city called Ernakulam. It was the second leg of a journey from the plantation I had been working at to the yoga and meditation home stay I was going to. The trip was supposed to be four and a half hours. It would be my first time taking Indian rail.

For some reason I decided that instead of buying a ticket and getting my own seat with AC I was going to go the “traditional Indian way” and try one of those cars that you see on tv with people crammed to the brims and riding on the roofs. Something rediculous possessed me into thinking maybe this would be fun.

My thought process was something like, “I’ve already been hospitalized and I’ve done cramped busses without AC with strangers invading my personal space, this won’t be so bad.”. If I ever write the book “Personal Logical Fallacies and Failures in Reasoning” by Tomás O’Connell I will be copy and pasting that quote somewhere into my first chapter.

Let me tell any person from a western country reading this: do not ever try this. If for God knows what reason you do want to try this dont be as dumb as me and attempt this on a day the temperatures rose to 105 degrees F (unless of course you are the kind of person who enjoys the thought of rubbing salt into your own gaping wounds)

The next major mistake I made was that I didn’t push people to get a somewhat reasonable spot on the train. If you ever find yourself in this situation make sure you push everyone. Push women. Push children. Push nuns. Push the physically disabled. Push old people. It doesnt matter Instead I watched as everyone savagely battled and struggled for position. The result of my paitence was a standing spot right next to the “bathroom” (I’ve seen several sewers more sanitary. The best description I can give is the part where Andy finally escapes from prison in The Shawshank Redemption.)

I don’t know what part was the worst: the heat, the 684 strangers who I was swapping body sweat with simeltaniously (that number is not nearly as much as a hyperbole as you would believe), or that every time I tried to calm myself by taking a deep breath I would wind up with an olfactory overflow of other peoples melting feces scurrying through my nostrils.

The train departed at 9. By 935 I realized that if I tried to stay here for the duration of the trip I would either faint, vomit or have a panic attack in that order of likelihood. By 1015 I had successfully bribed the ticket checker guy into letting me sit on the floor between first and second class for 50 rupees (a little less that a dollar).

Sometimes the best purchases in life come cheap.

Note that there are widely discussions on the Internet about where exactly these overcrowded train pictures are from. Some sources say they are from India, while other points of Bangladesh or Pakistan, why not maybe China… Please also note that these are pictures of extreme situations, most likely related to festival seasons, and in general Indian trains not that crowded.

This is called “Train Surfing” (also known as train hopping or train hitching) is the act of hitching a ride on the outside of a moving train, tram or another rail transport. I don’t wanna guess how many people got killed during this sunny day

ABBA was playing in town and Santosh and his friends were a bit late 

 The header image once again, most probably from Pakistan or India as per my research 

The sky has no limits and if money is your least problem then why not spend some cash on one of the most luxurious trains in the world – Indian Palace on Wheels. Tickets from around 2000 EUR but it will be embedded in a high-class package and ride will last for at least 7 days through some of the most beautiful destinations of India

Mustache! I trust this man Think 200 people with a Second Seating ticked could easily fit here