where i've been...

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

travel or vacation?

Sorry! I know some of you are worried after not hearing from me in a few days, but amazingly I have spent most of that time on trains! And guess what?!? We just got on another train.

So the quick rundown on our train trip. 26 hours turned into a 28 hour trip. We had an upper and lower bunk which we quickly found out means that during the day anyone and everyone jumps on the train and sits anywhere they can fit or squeeze on the bottom bunks. So in a space allocated for 8 people, we had (most of the daylight hours) about 25. Honestly.

It was interesting trying to manage our big packs, so we threw them on the upper bunk and I climbed up like a rat in a hole for the first 4 or 5 hours. Slowly as people shifted we got the bags stowed under the lower bunk and around 9 or 10pm we attempted to sleep. It was seriously the dirtiest and dustiest place ever. By doing nothing my hands and fingernails turned black. Grimey. Yucky.

We were awoken by a lively fight (who knows what happened, some lady was yelling at everyone in Hindi) at 5:45am. Seriously, people should NOT be allowed to yell before 6am.

So our journey continued until 3pm yesterday. We ate some yummy and some interesting food that the vendors came by selling, and tried to find the balance between stayimg hydrated and not having to pee! When we got off the train we stayed in the train station for another 2 hours getting out tickets for the Darjeeling Toy Train (from the movie the Darjeeling Limited) for today. Then we got a room, killed about 30 mosquitoes in it, bombed ourselved with repellant, and fell asleep. This am we were at the train station at 8:20 to catch a 9am train, only to find out that they switched the starting station to the next town 20 minutes away. So we hurriedlu bargained an autorickshaw and made it here (where of course we found out that they have delayed the train for an hour!).

So now you can all see how "traveling" and "vacationing" differ. :)

3 comments:

Jenny said...

gotta love those indian trains!

Unknown said...

Who me? Worry? Not a chance! :) Love you and miss you tons! Jesse, Lily and Audrey say hi! Lily LOVES the postcards you've sent. :)
xox

Debbie said...

Wow! You're such a trooper!!! I have never felt so dirty as I did after one of those train rides.