The morning was fresh, and a little cold. Margao train station was still busy even at 5.30 in the morning. The ticket office already had a queue and some people were camped out there. I guess getting a ticket is serious business. Ann and I work well in crowds, as she is small and agile enough to find gaps and move past people and I’m big enough to block people and to stop them from pushing – good attitudes for Indian culture to make sure you get served! The goal – get Ann served without people coming in from the sides and pushing her from behind. The pushing from behind is easy to sort. I just didn’t step forward as much when the queue moved forward to Ann had space to breath. If people push me, I start to shift my weight back onto them. Stopping people coming frm the side is something I learnt whilst trying to get drinks at busy bars – lean slightly and stick your arm on the counter and lock your elbow. No one can get past. With general tickets purchased we went off back to the station. General class is 3rd class and not great but we could buy a seat reservation on a better class now we had a ticket for the train. Unfortunately the ticket officer wasn’t there and as the train station was a bit cold we went into the lounge (for a small fee) which had sofas and a [semi] clean toilet.
10 minutes before the train arrived, the ticket officer returned and we got seats reserved in second class non a/c compartment. Ann then gave me a briefing about making sure we got on as these trains don’t hang around and it was important to identify our compartment and get on as the train is made and moving is difficult. The train came and in good fashion we jumped aboard as soon as we could. We found two seats together, which weren’t ours but hey, in India people adjust and our seats weren’t together.
The train soon filled up with people and we managed to keep our seats, which was great as they were next to a window. The seats weren’t exactly comfortable and was basically a bench as it was a sleeper train.
The journey was fabulous, especially as the sun came up. Food and drink often came around which was good and cheap. We had breakfast and lunch as well as drinks. I dont think we spent more than £3 together. Of course we had brought supplies as it was a 6 and half hour journey, and the usual thing is share food so I was handing out biscuits etc, which seemed to generate some smiles, especially from the young kids.
I managed to get some amazing photographs whilst we were travelling as the countryside was just sublime. At 1.30pm we arrived in Mangalore. By then it was very hot and it seemed like half the world was on the platform. we made a quick escape and headed for a taxi!
