The real question is HOW to get on the train in India?! This is a million dollar question! I succeed to get on the train once out of four times I had tried.
Train station is always packed with people, sitting on the floor and waiting for the train or something else...
I was in Mumbai and I went to the train station to buy a ticket to Ujjain. The first thing that had caught my eye was the number of people doing different things: sleeping or just taking a nap, eating, using every corner of the station as a public toilet. It seemed to me that the living in India was actually living on the train station.
A huge schedule appeared in front of me, with non alphabetic letters, I saw some trains too, but I didn't know where to buy the ticket. Everyone I asked was sending me from one side of the station to another with no progress, at all. It took an hour until a polite gentleman showed me the ticket office. What a lovely person, I thought for a second. His job was to show me a mess inside of the office so I give up on the train and buy a bus ticket from his agency. Lovely jobely, someone would say! There was a form I needed to fill up and the line I needed to wait in. I already didn't very feel very well from the heat but when I saw the line, I almost got a heart attack. Such a burocracy can't be learned from any sociological studie.
It is normal in India that people are standing close to each other so they can feel each other's breath. If there's some space, somebody will just cut the line. That was exactly the way I got to the counter. A clerk started bombing me with the information. There are certain grades of traveling: non sleeper, sleeper, ac, non ac... It was difficult for me to understand his body language, typical in India. He was telling me one thing but turning the head in the negative way even if the answer was affirmative. We spent some time trying to understand each other and when I finally got the money out of my pocket for the ticket, he told me there were no available tickets. But, that was not the end of the world. He suggested me to make a reservation, to pay for the reservation and to show up on the station. I would be able to get on the train only if somebody canceled alredy existing reservation. I couldn't believe that all that paperwork was for nothing. It was too risky for me so I just took a bus.
In Ujjain, on the way to Jaipur, was the same procedure: looking for the box office, endless lines and no tickets at the end. There was a board with an announcement that the system has been computerized which didn't make things easier. Inside of the ticket office, people were fighting with each other and with clerks. It was a chaos until police came and make them standing in line. I had a chance, once in a lifetime, to see locals standing in line. It was my turn whe the window shut down because of a lunch brake. When police left the office, the line was gone, too. And, I just took a bus.
In New Delhie, I tried to book the train to Agra and Taj Mahal. A short guy appeared in front of me, telling me that the entrance was few blocks far even if I saw people entering the station.
"It is for locals only. You can't buy a ticket here", he said, showing me the bus schedule.
Beside his intention to make a business, it was an act of discrimination, too. Maybe I wasn't good enough to travel with locals? What an irony! Mahatma Gandhi spent his life fighting for equal rights on the train and now there is a special price for tourists in his country. Unfortunately, that short guy was right. It turned out that hiring a private car would be easier and cheaper. Plus, waiting in line to book the ticket would last as much as building of new Taj Mahal. I found two more tourists thinking the same to share the expanses with. Catching somebody to travel with made me look just like that short travel agent in front of the station.
To book the train to Allahabad was my last chance and I finally I got a jackpot. Three weeks of trying payed off. I had also a chance to see that famous waiting list. People were looking for their names on the list like their life depended on it.
I got on the train and I fell a sleep to the sound of my roomate's snoring. The following day, I woke up with no romantic experience but, at least, at the destination where I wanted to be!
Namaste!
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