Heels, Himalayas and Hilarity!!: Vindacrew’s EPIC 33 hour train journey – Days 4 and 5

Wow! What a journey! From reclining on a bench in a rooftop bar in Varkala Beach it all seems like a distant blur, but the Vindacrew (Steph, Danny and Will plus Dot, the tagalong) had a crazy, surreal, amazing, intense, EPIC 33 hour train journey most of the way in ‘sleeper class’ (read, cattle class, no air conditioning) in order to be able to get to enjoy this paradise.

The arrival to the train station was easy enough. Sandeep, our tour guide from the day before picked us up from our hostel and drove us the hour to drop us off to what could only be described as chaos! We managed to find our platform, train, carriage and seats again with relative ease. So far so good. However upon embarking, it was about 5 minutes until we saw our first cockroach lazily crawling on the back of one of our seats… and then another, and another, and plenty more after that! Needless to say the stakes had just been raised!

We were the only white people on the train, like snow glistening in the dark – and what a novelty that made us!! Everybody just stared at us, for minutes on end and even on meeting held their gaze. Really they were just curious, but it was a little bit disconcerting to start with to say the least, like we were aliens from outer space or had two heads or something!

A few other points that have to be shared to get a true flavour of exactly what we were dealing with on that train: the toilets were literally just a hole that went straight through to the tracks – straight down, and ass to track became our adopted saying. Any rubbish went straight out the open windows – not a rubbish bin in sight. That’s quite something to get your head around having been brought up a tidy Kiwi, but with a lack of options there was little else we could do. When in Rome, I guess...

There was a constant stream of people coming through selling chai tea, coffee, soft drinks, water, assorted eats, colouring books, torches, zips (?!), bags – you name it, it was being sold on that train. And it was HOT!! We were sold the tickets (exceptionally cheap – the ticket cost £6!) on the basis that the windows opened and there were fans. Well the windows did open, which was particularly lovely when we were going through massive tunnels and the ash and soot and dust came flying straight into our lungs. And the fans, well, really they did nothing. Thankfully not only did the windows open, but so too did the doors. And this turned out to be the best spot on the train. Standing at an open door with the air rushing by you taking in absolutely awesome scenes of countryside and a glimpse into the everyday lives of these poverty stricken people with camera in hand really was something else.

As the hours passed, eventually day turned into night and it became time to try and sleep. Our six seats turned into 6 bunks. I was in one of the two middle bunks, and it was with more than a little trepidation that I lifted up what was the back of the sitting seats into a horizontal position. Bracing myself for a flurry of roaches and god knows what other bugs that in my mind were lurking behind that seat I breathed an audible sigh of relief to find it clean (ish – there were no insects at least!). Sleep wasn't particularly forthcoming and came in stops and starts, the most surprising of which was when I heard scuffling to open a slit of my eye to see a family now sitting below me that very definitely weren't there before I shut my eyes! After establishing in my head that they weren't going to rob me (and consoling myself with the fact that all my stuff was locked and strapped to the metal post of my ‘bed’), I finally managed to fall back to sleep.

Next thing I know I was awoken to that now familiar sound of ‘chai’, ‘coffee’, ‘chai’. Must be morning and breakfast time… nope, 5.15am! Wicked! Maybe it’s just one round for the early birds and then they’ll go away?.. Nope, the rounds had started again, must be up time. I continued to drift in and out of sleep to wake again to some quite excited voices from the Vindacrew. I leaned over to see what all the commotion was about to hear that “things have changed again, you better get down here”. Okay, I thought, they've decided to head south from our final destination instead of north to Varkala which was where I was headed - no big deal. Nope again. Actually, they'd just discovered that our tickets that we thought took us all the way to Tivrandrum only takes us to Ernakulum, and actually, that means to get to our destination we need to be on the train another 8 hours so instead of disembarking the train at 11.40am from what was supposed to be a 24 hour train journey, means our total travel time will be a whopping 33 hours!! Brilliant! Another day on the train. But… can we actually stay on the train? At the next stop with ticket in hand I jumped off and went charging up 4 carriages to try and find the train conductor to see if it were even going to be possible for us to get to our intended destination. Thankfully, for another 300 rupees we were able to and we decided instead of staying sleeper that we would upgrade our lives to the air-conditioned carriage, where we also found a lot more tourists. It seems no-one else was silly enough to want the ‘authentic’ experience and went a/c the full way. Smart people perhaps, but as uncomfortable, hot, loud and infested as that train journey was, it’s not an experience I would not change for the world. Perhaps not one I will necessarily repeat in a hurry, but if the locals take that journey in those conditions every time they need to travel, it would be insane if I couldn't handle it once. Again, it’s given me a true appreciation for how lucky I really am. And that, my friends, is priceless!

Namaste xxx

That train was moving - best seat in the house!

Vindacrew at the start of the journey - all smiles before seeing the first cockroach!

The train was HUGE!

My bed on the train - heaps of room!

Our sleeper class carriage - check out all the feet up top!

Chaos at the train station!

Just chilling at the station

Lunch time at a station

Track-side houses

People just sitting on the side of the tracks

A cool dip would have been just what the doctor ordered - not sure I'd get in that water though!

This is a shot from out of the door whilst moving - you literally could have jumped straight in the water from the moving train!

Beautiful scenery made the journey worth it

Entertaining myself some hours into the journey! I can't even describe the looks I got from a couple of passerbys - the only white face on the train taking photos of herself in the only mirror! Classic!