I know I have veered away from the topic of my winter traveling for the last few posts.
But, really, aren't honor killings and the mortality rate of girls a bit more important than me visiting Buddhist temples and hanging out in a wildlife refuge?
Yeah, I thought so.
Not to mention this blog should really be so much more than the play-by-play of my trips, but I don't often come across such timely articles and tidbits to share.
But now let's get back to the...play-by-play of my trip...
When last I left you, Kerala had bitten the big one. I'm sure it really is a fantastic and beautiful state, as I've been told by pretty much everyone who has ever been there. I just didn't get to see that. I know 48 hours is not a whole lot of time for exploring an area, but considering how much we managed to see in the same amount of time in Sri Lanka, it was a tad anticlimactic.
On Day 8 we left Neeru's house in Cochin and hubby and I took an overnight train to Goa (the in-laws flew straight to Pune, where we joined them two days later).
On the way to the train station, with my father-in-law driving Neeru's car, we blew out a tire. Losing a tire is dangerous and frightening enough, but add in the crappy roads, excessive traffic and extremely bad drivers of India and it's a wonder we got out alive.
Already cutting it pretty close to the departure time (remember how I explained Indian Standard Time?), we grabbed our luggage and hoofed it to the station.
This was just the icing on the cake of my fear of my father-in-law's driving. I have never enjoyed his driving, not a single time that I've ridden in his car. But within 48 hours he had managed not only to destroy a tire while driving what was probably too fast for India anyway, but he had also sideswiped a car and taken out the driver's side mirror (just starting out on the way to Thekkady).
And this was not even his car!
Anyway, back to my first ever overnight train ride. I failed to take any photos of our sleeper car (for reasons I will explain shortly), but some kind soul over at IndiaMike.com (a very good resource, by the way) posted these photos so that I may explain.
One side of the train car looks like this, with three people on each seat:
On the other side of the train car, there are two single-person seats facing each other, with a single berth above:
The bottom seats fold down to make another berth:
When filled with people, it looks something like this:
And there you have it! Traveling sleeper class on a train in India is akin to flying first class on Singapore Airlines. Or not.
They do hand out "clean" sheets and pillows, but I had been warned and had packed my own.
Being a germaphobe (technically called a "mysophobe", thank you wikipedia) in India requires much planning and advance preparation, along with some creative packing skills (like bottles of hand sanitizer stashed in every compartment of every bag you have, a plastic bag containing a bar of soap for things like 16 hour train rides with no soap in sight, throw-away paper or fabric of any kind stashed everywhere for grabbing things like bathroom door handles and for covering your face when someone inevitably sneezes all over you without even the pretense of covering their mouth, etc.).
FYI: top berths are supposed to be the best in terms of people not being able to fall over onto you as they walk by. Just so you know. Because I know this post is making you so eager to take an overnight train through India.
Don't worry, it gets better.
About two hours into the trip, hubby complains he doesn't feel well. He climbs up onto my berth and puts his head in my lap to take a nap.
This is more complicated than it sounds.
I'd been relegated to my (top) berth because the guy on the bottom berth decided to lay down and go to sleep while I was gone to the bathroom. With nowhere else to sit, I had to climb on up. Since it was the side berth, there was a bit more space between me and the ceiling. Meaning you can sit with your back straight if you lean forward so that your head is in the aisle. If you hang your legs over the side, into the aisle, they're very much in the way for everyone walking past, so you have to sit with your legs crossed up on the seat. So I was sitting like this with a whole person draped across my lap. Comfy!
All that to say, this shit is not easy.
So hubby doesn't feel well, and then he goes and gets sick. Again and again and again. At one point I wondered if maybe he'd fallen off the train he was in the bathroom so long.
When he was finally able to make it back to his seat, pale and sweating, he said the words I had not realized I'd wanted to hear: "I think I understand now how miserable you were." (Referring to when I spent two weeks of our 2009 trip more sick than anyone should ever be in their life.)
Being sick at your stomach on a train is no easy thing. For one, you're on a moving vehicle which is rarely (if ever) helpful for an upset stomach. Two, you're sharing a bathroom with like a few dozen people, so you may have to wait your turn...no small feat when everything you've ingested in the past day is fighting to get out. Three, you have to use the toilet WHILE MOVING! I have enough issues with that on airplanes and you can hardly even tell. Four, it's a squat toilet. I challenge you to squat down, swaying from side to side (and front to back), and even just imagine trying to use the bathroom. Or vomit. It's enough to make you never want to leave your house again.
Thankfully, he only had to feel that miserable for one night. As luck would have it, his seatmates turned out to both be doctors and carrying around a ton of medicines. They loaded him up with drugs, I tucked him into his berth, and he passed out like a baby. After checking on him a few dozen times to make sure he was still breathing, I too went to sleep.
Sleeping on a train is really not all that bad. Or at least it's really not all that bad when you have your own sheet, your own pillow, ear plugs and a sleeping pill. I mean, if you have to go to the bathroom in the night you have to climb down a slippery ladder, find your shoes under the other guy's bed, walk down the aisle without falling over into anyone else's bed, go outside the car and use an f'ng squat toilet, hopefully remembering to bring your roll of tp and your bar of soap. But apart from that, it's easy peasy.
Now I just wrote a ridiculously long post on train travel. And frankly, just remembering it makes me tired. So this is all you get today. As always, in parting, I wish you love, peace and SOUL!
But, really, aren't honor killings and the mortality rate of girls a bit more important than me visiting Buddhist temples and hanging out in a wildlife refuge?
Yeah, I thought so.
Not to mention this blog should really be so much more than the play-by-play of my trips, but I don't often come across such timely articles and tidbits to share.
But now let's get back to the...play-by-play of my trip...
When last I left you, Kerala had bitten the big one. I'm sure it really is a fantastic and beautiful state, as I've been told by pretty much everyone who has ever been there. I just didn't get to see that. I know 48 hours is not a whole lot of time for exploring an area, but considering how much we managed to see in the same amount of time in Sri Lanka, it was a tad anticlimactic.
On Day 8 we left Neeru's house in Cochin and hubby and I took an overnight train to Goa (the in-laws flew straight to Pune, where we joined them two days later).
On the way to the train station, with my father-in-law driving Neeru's car, we blew out a tire. Losing a tire is dangerous and frightening enough, but add in the crappy roads, excessive traffic and extremely bad drivers of India and it's a wonder we got out alive.
Already cutting it pretty close to the departure time (remember how I explained Indian Standard Time?), we grabbed our luggage and hoofed it to the station.
This was just the icing on the cake of my fear of my father-in-law's driving. I have never enjoyed his driving, not a single time that I've ridden in his car. But within 48 hours he had managed not only to destroy a tire while driving what was probably too fast for India anyway, but he had also sideswiped a car and taken out the driver's side mirror (just starting out on the way to Thekkady).
And this was not even his car!
Anyway, back to my first ever overnight train ride. I failed to take any photos of our sleeper car (for reasons I will explain shortly), but some kind soul over at IndiaMike.com (a very good resource, by the way) posted these photos so that I may explain.
One side of the train car looks like this, with three people on each seat:
The pad that makes up the back of the seat lifts up and latches to the top berth, so that all three people have a bed:
On the other side of the train car, there are two single-person seats facing each other, with a single berth above:
The bottom seats fold down to make another berth:
When filled with people, it looks something like this:
And there you have it! Traveling sleeper class on a train in India is akin to flying first class on Singapore Airlines. Or not.
They do hand out "clean" sheets and pillows, but I had been warned and had packed my own.
Being a germaphobe (technically called a "mysophobe", thank you wikipedia) in India requires much planning and advance preparation, along with some creative packing skills (like bottles of hand sanitizer stashed in every compartment of every bag you have, a plastic bag containing a bar of soap for things like 16 hour train rides with no soap in sight, throw-away paper or fabric of any kind stashed everywhere for grabbing things like bathroom door handles and for covering your face when someone inevitably sneezes all over you without even the pretense of covering their mouth, etc.).
FYI: top berths are supposed to be the best in terms of people not being able to fall over onto you as they walk by. Just so you know. Because I know this post is making you so eager to take an overnight train through India.
Don't worry, it gets better.
About two hours into the trip, hubby complains he doesn't feel well. He climbs up onto my berth and puts his head in my lap to take a nap.
This is more complicated than it sounds.
I'd been relegated to my (top) berth because the guy on the bottom berth decided to lay down and go to sleep while I was gone to the bathroom. With nowhere else to sit, I had to climb on up. Since it was the side berth, there was a bit more space between me and the ceiling. Meaning you can sit with your back straight if you lean forward so that your head is in the aisle. If you hang your legs over the side, into the aisle, they're very much in the way for everyone walking past, so you have to sit with your legs crossed up on the seat. So I was sitting like this with a whole person draped across my lap. Comfy!
All that to say, this shit is not easy.
So hubby doesn't feel well, and then he goes and gets sick. Again and again and again. At one point I wondered if maybe he'd fallen off the train he was in the bathroom so long.
When he was finally able to make it back to his seat, pale and sweating, he said the words I had not realized I'd wanted to hear: "I think I understand now how miserable you were." (Referring to when I spent two weeks of our 2009 trip more sick than anyone should ever be in their life.)
Being sick at your stomach on a train is no easy thing. For one, you're on a moving vehicle which is rarely (if ever) helpful for an upset stomach. Two, you're sharing a bathroom with like a few dozen people, so you may have to wait your turn...no small feat when everything you've ingested in the past day is fighting to get out. Three, you have to use the toilet WHILE MOVING! I have enough issues with that on airplanes and you can hardly even tell. Four, it's a squat toilet. I challenge you to squat down, swaying from side to side (and front to back), and even just imagine trying to use the bathroom. Or vomit. It's enough to make you never want to leave your house again.
Thankfully, he only had to feel that miserable for one night. As luck would have it, his seatmates turned out to both be doctors and carrying around a ton of medicines. They loaded him up with drugs, I tucked him into his berth, and he passed out like a baby. After checking on him a few dozen times to make sure he was still breathing, I too went to sleep.
Sleeping on a train is really not all that bad. Or at least it's really not all that bad when you have your own sheet, your own pillow, ear plugs and a sleeping pill. I mean, if you have to go to the bathroom in the night you have to climb down a slippery ladder, find your shoes under the other guy's bed, walk down the aisle without falling over into anyone else's bed, go outside the car and use an f'ng squat toilet, hopefully remembering to bring your roll of tp and your bar of soap. But apart from that, it's easy peasy.
Now I just wrote a ridiculously long post on train travel. And frankly, just remembering it makes me tired. So this is all you get today. As always, in parting, I wish you love, peace and SOUL!
I really, really feel for you and K - and I never want to be on that train. But golly, you are so funny and entertaining. I love your writing. Are you sure you shouldn't write a book or magazine article?
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