Train

Leaving Chennamkary I decide to travel south down the coast. I was to take the 3.30pm train the 160km from  Alleppey to Varkalla. I arrived at the station half an hour early for the 3.30 train. I was pleasantly surprised with how spacious, clean and organised it all was. On the platform several women were sweeping the floor and there were plenty of modern metal seats. I went to the ticket office and asked for a sleeper class ticket to Varkalla. ‘4 o’clock train’, said the man behind the counter, ‘I thought it was 3.30?’ ‘4 o’clock’. 

There are many classes of tickets available on Indian trains: 2^nd class, which is unreserved seating in carriages with open windows – air cooled; sleeper, which is also unreserved and air-cooled. These carriages have benches during the day that become sleeping berths at night. Then there are 2 classes of air-conditioned carriages – 2 tier and 3 tier, which I assume relate to the number of berths. As it was only to be  a relatively short journey of 1 and a half hours  I chose the sleeper class. This would mean I could get into either the 2^nd class, or sleeper carriages when the train arrived.

I checked the time and the platform with the enquiry office. ‘4 o’clock, platform 1’ and walked out onto the platform. There didn’t seem to be any clues as to which platform was which. I could assume the first platform was number 1, but that might not be correct. Feeling slightly foolish I went back to the enquiry desk to check and yes platform 1 was the first one.

Alleppey station

The train was coming from Mumbai, some 1400km away, and I had been warned it could be late, so I settled down to wait. I watched the people catching the trains. A middle-aged couple with luggage wanted to get the train that was waiting on platform 3. It was a long distance train to Chennai and consisted of about 30 carriages. He climbed off the platform and onto the track, a height of about 4’ I guess , then took the luggage from his wife; crossed the two lines of track and put the luggage up on the opposite platform. He came back for his wife. She was of plump proportions and wearing a sari, which is not the most practical garment for physical gymnastics. She managed to sit on the edge of the platform and he grasped her around the hips to lift her to the track bed. The operation at the opposite platform was not so straight forward. He hoisted her up from behind by her hips, but her sari meant that she couldn’t get her leg out sideways to put her knee or foot up on the platform. She was lying on her tummy on the platform with her legs dangling. He jumped up and pulled her on her front onto the platfom, so she could then roll over and get up. I wondered if that was the only way to cross the tracks, in which case I was lucky my train was leaving from platform 1; I would struggle to do this with my rucksack. However looking further down the platform there was a footbridge about 200m away. I couldn’t get a picture of this, but here is one of a father and his young son crossing to the opposite platform.  When another train arrived t platform 2 this made it easier to access platform 3, because then the people only had to get down from one platform, climb up into the waiting platform 2 train, which had steps low enough down its sides to make this possible from the track; cross through it and walk across to platform 3

Crossing the tracks

The train officials were wearing a similar khaki uniform to the bus officials, but these me also had sticks of about 2’ in length that they either carried under their arm or swung at their side. They walked up and down in groups of 2 or 3 and stood around talking. I have heard that the Indian railways is the biggest employer in the world (the NHS comes second).

Soon after 4 o’clock there was an announcement that my train would be expected to arrive at 4.20. 4.20 came and went and at 4.30 the announcement said that the train would arrive shortly and it came in at 4.45. It was a similarly long train and it looked pretty full. Once in the train there was no obvious place for me to sit or put my luggage. A group of people did some shuffling around and indicated that I could sit down. My rucksack had to be partly blocking the aisle.  Once settle I could look around. It was all pretty gloomy. The open windows had bars, which restricted the view and light coming in, but presumably also stopped luggage and people from falling out, either accidently or deliberately. The walls would have originally been white, which is perhaps not the sensible choice. The seats were covered in blue plastic and the floor was blue lino.  Whereas a typical English train layout will probably have the aisle down the middle of the carriage and 4 seats and a table on each side of the aisle; in this train the aisle was off-set, so that on one side there were two single seats facing each other with a bunk above and on the other were two bench seats facing each other, the back of the back of the seats would become another two bunks and a further two bunks were up higher up again. There was space for luggage under the seats, or on the top bunks. So whereas an English train has seats for 8, in the comparable space in this Indian train 10 people could sit and 3 could lie on the top bunks. If all the seats were made into bunks 8 people could lie down individually.

In the section where I was sitting there were 2 middle-aged couples who looked like 2 sisters, married to two brothers. The whole time between 2 and 4 of them were talking simultaneously. There was also another separate couple who sat side-by-side. The woman sat by the window with a small table in front of her reading a paperback printed in Malayalam. She had a blow-up cushion behind her back that she adjusted occasionally. In the top bunks young men lay quietly; one had headphones on. Occasionally they would change position and a leg would hang over the side, or they would stretch out and put their feet across onto the opposite bunk. It was very hot in the carriage when we stopped in the stations, but the air-cooling made it bearable when we were moving. Several people selling tea, coffee and snacks came past. I didn’t see anyone buy anything. A man came by with a pile of magazines. He handed a  pile each to a woman and a man and moved up the aisle. They leafed through them. The woman seemed to have children’s workbooks - ABC etc and the man comic strips. The magazine seller came back and the man and the woman each bought a few.

After about ¾ hour the 2 couples started packing up and tidying their things, getting ready to leave the train. Once they had gone the rest of us in that space rearranged ourselves. The man moved across and sat opposite his wife. I noticed he was wearing western style clothes of shorts and striped polo shirt – the first time I have seen an Indian man wearing shorts. Next he picked up an empty plastic water bottle and squashed it flat. I could guess what was going to happen next. He casually put it out through the bars of the window and conscientiously waiting until we had gone through a station and left houses behind he dropped it onto the track. He then got up and walked up the aisle. When he came back his face and hair were totally wet. He used a small hand towel to dry himself then he got out a comb and standing to use the dirty mirror above the table, combed his hair neatly forward. Then he opened his bag and took out two small travel-sized products. One was hair oil that he squeezed onto the palm of his hand and then rubbed vigorously into his hair for several minutes. Then he stood up again and looking in the mirror parted his hair carefully and meticulously at the side. When he was satisfied with the neatness of his coiffure he sat down and picked up the 2^nd product. It was talc. Where was this going – under his arms, on his feet? No, he rubbed a small amount onto his hands and then rubbed it all over his face, wiping the excess off with his small towel and checking in the mirror. Then he was in his bag again to get out a neatly ironed and packed pair of trousers and cotton shirt with a collar. He took off his polo shirt, revealing a short sleeved vest and put on the clean shirt, then he disappeared down the carriage and came back wearing the clean trousers.

At just after 7pm we pulled into a station. It was never easy to see the station signs through the barred windows and I almost missed that we had arrived at Varkalla. I hurried with my bags to the train door and stepped out onto the platform. It was dark and a large flock of black birds were making a noise as they settled to roost for the night.