We asked these men who spoke enough English for us to understand to look at our ticket and tell us what time we would arrive at Ahmedabad. Without looking at our ticket, everyone repeatedly told us it would be tomorrow. Both Linda and I were in shock and disbelief. The guy at the counter who sold us the ticket did not tell us we would arrive in Ahmedabad the next day at 4pm. We thought it would only take us a day to get there but not, it would take us a total of 34 hours instead. We looked at each other and said how could we have missed this. The ticket was printed on Dot Matrix and although there were numbers on it, it really didn’t say anything we could understand. Well, this changed things. We were both bummed out about the very long train ride. We could have broken the train ride into parts and stopped and played along the way to Ahmedabad. Well, I decided at the next train stop to look for a phone and call Nirali who was ready to meet with us on our arrival in Ahmedabad. I had to wait in line for my turn and the guy in front of me took a long time to make different calls and look for his coins each time. I looked at the service guy and he finally grabbed the phone from the guy in between his calls and let me make my very quick call. He let me cut in. I made my call and kept it short.
Then went and bought samosa since we would be on the train for another 24 hours and would need food. While I was getting my food, another person behind me tapped my shoulders and pointed to the train behind me that was moving and it was my train. My train was leaving without me. I ran with my samosas and dahl and looked for an open door. I managed to hop on as it sped up. I had no idea what cart it was that I was on but regardless, I made it onto my train. That was a close call, glad the guy behind me was nice enough to tap me on the shoulder.
I finally located my cart and my seat. I found Linda in a wreck, thinking I had missed my train and she was left all alone without me. Since I had the contact information for Ahmedabad, she would be really left alone without me. One of the guys in the cart went looking for me as the train rolled to pull me onto the train if needed. That was very nice of him but he didn’t manage to find me and didn’t manage to heroically pull me onto the moving train. But the fact he jumped to his feet out of good samaritan act and looked for me was heroically enough.
For the rest of the train ride the entire cart of men decided to look after us and take care of us. We discovered they were all army men on their day off going home for vacation. The entire cart were of the same platoon. Their captain was on the cart too. Instead of getting off the train soon like we thought, we moved to our top bunk to rest a bit since we had another 24 hours to chill. Linda was totally prepared with Indian train ride and had lots of mini locks to lock her chained luggage to the bunk. I didn’t think of such things since I didn’t think of being all the way in India, I just had plans of Beijing to begin with and somehow traveled 5 countries so far and all they way to India. I didn’t think of bringing a sleeping bag which I really needed here in India. I could have used it for the bus ride from Delhi to Dharmsala and now on this train. Now that we would be spending the nigh on the train. All of which I was not prepared for.
There are cockroaches on the train. People on the train had to tip a boy to sweep our cart clean. One of the roaches landed on me and I freaked out and flicked it away, it landed three bunks down. I hoped it was okay.
