Riding on Indian Railway

For anyone planning to visit Kerala has to pay a visit to Johnsons The Nest in Alleppey (Alappuzha). Now, it wasnt such a good journey to Alleppey from Travandrum (3 hour train ride) which in this heat and with the amount of people that are here was definitely an experience.

Lucy and I were taken to Trivandrum Train Station by Babu for 9:30am, giving us 30 minutes to purchase a ticket and make our way to the platform. However, on reaching the platform we realised we should have allowed longer. The queue was of around 15 people in two separate lines and everybody pushes and shoves to be in front of you. On reaching the front of the queue we had two choices; Second Class or Sleeper Class. To be on the safe side we chose Sleeper class and the cost of the train wasn't expensive to begin with.

Now, because we had queued for so long we had to make a run for it to reach platform 2 with literally minutes to spare. As you can imagine running in flipflop sandals in 90 degree humid heat is not a good combination. We got on the train and there was no seats. However, there were a couple of seats next to the window but were occupied by bags. No-one was willing to own up to who they belonged to so I moved them on to the sleeper above the two seats. Minutes later an angry looking man stormed down the carriage and stopped directly in front of us, at tis point I realised that he was looking for his bags which he had placed on the seat to save them. I was not going to move, sleeper class on a train is better than second but it still doesn't compare to what we are used to.

I wish there was a way for me to describe what it was like but there is nothing in cmparison in the UK that we would have seen. Second class, however, can only be described as pigs being hauled to an abattoir. The people are squashed and squeezed in and with there being no glass in the windows just bars it makes for a better comparison. 

The smell is unreal. Before I left for India a friend of mine warned me of the smell of urine and feces at the train stations. He said to me that when you use the toilet on a train it goes straight through on to the track. Apparently, people do get told not to use the toilet why the train is at a standstill at the station but clearly people don't listen. As the train pulled away from the station there was an almighty gush of vileness blew directly in to your face.