Mike- Still recovering from jet lag and sporadic sleeping patterns, we decided to take it easy today in an effort to get our bodies on India time. We booked a train ticket which left at 4:30pm that day, and we figured if we could stay awake the entire duration until we arrived in Aurangabad then we’d be well on our way to adjusting.
Before hopping on the train we grabbed a bite to eat at a Persian Vegetarian Lunch House. Funny enough, it was our first true Indian meal the entire trip. Mumbai is such an international city that, as it happened, we’d eaten falafels, American breakfast, and sandwiches. Anyways, we ordered the lunch platter and it was incredible. I can only name half of what we ate, but it was awesome. Personally, I’ve had trouble finding places that serve portion sizes that actually fill me up, but this place definitely left me with a full stomach.
The CST train terminal – otherwise known as the Victoria Terminus – is a large colonial building that is usually pretty chaotic. Today, it wasn’t all that bad. We found our platform and berths with no problem.
We booked tickets on the AC3 sleeper class, which basically means there are 6 seats per compartment and 3 convertible bunks on each side across from each other. We shared a berth with a guy named Monaz, who was travelling past Aurangabad for work (he tested telecommunications equipment for a Danish company). He’d travelled all over India and was very eager to give us tips and show us pictures of the places he’s been.
An economics professor from the university in Aurangabad heard our Canadian accents and decided to stop by for a chat. He had been to Vancouver to lecture on water conservation in India at UBC. He asked us to read two essays he had written. One was using Ghandian principles to develop a set of ethics for environmental policy, and the other concerned the drinking water shortage in India. The first was heavily critical of the West, and our – quote – gigantic propensity to consume.
We arrived in Auragabad shortly after midnight; passed out soon after hitting the sheets. Tomorrow we hit up the Ellora caves; pretty pumped!
Teg- The train experience was awesome, much more comfortable than what I had expected! As much as I had tried to stay awake for its duration, I was out by 7pm lol. The interesting thing about these rides is that you really never know when your getting off; there’s no communication system of any kind. Since it was pitch black out, we had to ask a few times to make sure that we hadn’t skipped over our destination.
I have a feeling I’m going to be saying this many times over, but I can’t help but say that the people here are extremely friendly, even though sometimes it might cost us 20 cents. As soon as we were out of the train, there was a man at our side who was willing to walk with us to the hotel that we had planned on going to. Once there, we found out that they had no vacancy (after ringing the doorbell, waking one of the few sleeping men on the lobby floor who stumbled over to tell us ‘no’ lol). So our ‘now’ walking friend pulled out his wallet to show us one of the many hotel cards he was carrying. We then (yes, all 3 of us) jumped into a small rick-shaw and set off for the next hotel on the list. Once at the next stop, we had two friendly men get out and join us in the hotel lobby (rick-shaw man and walker-man). So here we were, in a decently clean lobby, surrounded by many men that were all vying to help us out and get a small junk of cash out of it. We over-payed for two nights (17$/night haha), which we guess is to tip the other men off, and we payed our night companions a dollar to split lol. Everyone was satisfied, and soon after we were asleep in a clean, secure room (two key words lol).
No comments:
Post a Comment