Mumbai to Jaipur (Feb 13 -14)

Sleeper class
Artemis

Before you read this I’m going to say that everything you’re about to read is NOT an exaggeration.

Train station resident

In North India we mostly traveled by train. Trains are organized in classes. The lowest class there is, is unreserved, second there’s sleeper class which is the lowest reserved class, next there’s 3 tier AC , after that it’s 2 tier AC and last but not least there’s first class AC. Some trains won’t even have first class AC (AC stands for air conditioning) in fact most of the trains we went on didn’t have first class. Now that you understand the train system we can get on with the story.
Jesse (Caleb’s friend in case you didn’t know) has just arrived 2 days ago and now we’re all taking a train from Mumbai to Jaipur. Our plan is all set : we leave the hotel at 1:30 and catch the train at 3:00. It’s a overnight train and we arrive the next morning at 10:00. I’m really exited to see what the train will be like. As my mom pays the hotel my dad goes out to organize a taxi. The annoying thing is that now we’re 5 people. It’s so perfect to travel with four people because there’s 4 seats in a taxi, there’s 4 sides of a table , for hotels we can get 2 rooms for 2 people etc. All in all 4 people is perfect. Not that I don’t want Jesse to come with us, I think it will be really fun to have a different person around.

We end up getting 2 taxi’s one with Jesse and Caleb and one with me, mom and dad. After an insane drive, we arrive at the train station. The taxi driver gets our bags out of the trunk and we meet up with Jesse and Caleb.

Walking to the train. Jesse in front

The train station is just a big platform with train tracks on either side, a roof that covers your head but it’s all open. In between two train tracks there were water faucets sticking up every 5 meters. People from the slums across from the train station would cross the train track, go between the two and get their drinking water and bathing water.

Station

View of slums from train platform

There were three young girls going back and forth with water. One girl was my age and the two others were maybe 6 or 7 but its hard to tell. The older girl would jump down with two empty jugs and cross over the shit covered tracks. Then she would run to a faucet sticking up and use a little tool to open it. When she
opened it with her little tool the water would come squirting upwards so she would point it down with her hand and thus try to aim it into her water jug. All the while she’s looking out for police and trains!



After being at the train station for a few minutes we here the train has been delayed until 6:00! So here we are in the dirtiest, stinkiest most disgusting train station and we have to wait 3 hours! Not to mention the train tracks are covered in shit because when you go to the bathroom in the train it goes right on the track! And there are rats running all over the tracks and there are little kids walking barefoot on the shit covered tracks looking for water bottles! And there is garbage all over the place, there are people everywhere and we have to watch are bags because people might steel them and and and…

Wiating for the train

Waiting for the train

In all this craziness we still end up making a seat with are bags on the ground. I borrowed Jesses' iPod and Caleb and Jesse were watching a movie on Caleb’s PSP. Mom and dad went for a walk and we all just sat waiting for the train to arrive.
After waiting way too long the train finally shows up. We had booked sleeper class. When the train comes to a halt, we all run to our seats. When we finally get into the right compartment and find our seats, there’s some other people who have the same seat’s as us! I have no idea what’s going on I’m just happy we’re out of that damn train station! My dad and some Muslim girls are talking over what seat is who’s. We finally sort it out and I look around.

In our compartment there is one isle about a metre wide. On one side you look there’s 6 beds and on the other side there’s 3. How it works is there are 3 beds on top of each other. The middle bed is folded down on the wall to use as a back rest for sitting down. When it’s night time you pull up the middle bed and take the two rope things for holding it up and you’ve got a bed. Mom and I both slept in the two middle beds while Caleb and Jesse slept on the two top ones. Dad slept on the other side with 3 beds and he slept on the top. During the day, on the train, the middle bed’s are all down so you can sit on the seats.

When we all got settled I started to talk to 3 Muslim girls. One was a wife and another one was the wife’s husbands sister, they were both in there early twenties and very beautiful. The older one was the wife’s husbands mother who was in her mid sixty’s. They had come to Mumbai so the wife could visit her mother. She was upset to leave her mother because she didn’t see her very often. When she got married she moved to Jaipur with her husband. The other girl was her sister in-law (her husbands sister). The two girls were very close and the sister was always taking care of the wife. They all had long black coats on top of their surita’s (a Indian outfit) and a black scarf loosely put over their head. They didn’t cover their face and I thought they weren’t that religious like some of the other girls who were covered head to toe. The sister was very cheerful and happy, always feeding her husbands wife and wiping her tears away. The two girls were more like sister’s than in-laws. But the wife was more dark and sad because of leaving her mother. We played games with the two girls and talked to them even though they didn’t know that much English, so it was more short words and hand signals.

Muslim ladies

The train was an overnight train. Every few minutes someone would walk through the isle’s: a beggar, some kids playing an instrument to make money, a person selling Chai, a person selling some food, a shoe shiner, a kid cleaning the floor and asking for money, a women saying a prayer and putting a bindi on your head (a bindi is a red dot that Hindus put on there forehead), a ticket man checking your tickets. All day and all night people would come through. Each Chai seller (Chai is a Indian tea) had his own personal Chai call so when I was sleeping at 2:00 in the morning I here “Chai! Chai! Chai!”

Sleeping on the train

In the morning when we were getting off, the wife started to put on a full face cover. We all watched her as she disappeared behind the cloth. The other girl didn’t do that, I guess she wasn’t married yet. It was still quite a surprise when she started to put on the birqua ( face cover) .

When we went on the train I didn’t know it would be so cold at night! It was freezing! I had to put on socks, a tuk and my polar fleece sweater to stay warm. I didn’t get much sleep that night but it was the experience that counts.
Talking to the Muslim girls, looking out the window at Indian women way out in the desert carrying water buckets on their head, sleeping in a dirty, grungy train, meeting different people, trying the food that the Muslim girls had brought, reading, playing cards, that train ride was so amazing. Even
though we had to wait three hours to get on the train, and the train was dirty and no privacy, and I got maybe 4 hours of sleep. I wouldn’t want to change a single thing. Because it was the perfect sleeper class experience.

By Artemis Walden