Playing Hookey!
I escaped from the writing today and went down to London to the BETT show - its the computer geeks equivalent for teachers! The show was great, I picked up lots of ideas and met up with past colleagues which was wonderful!
However, what struck me was the difference between this train journey and the last one I took. Did I tell you aabout my train journeys in India? Well, where to start?
Let's consider the tickets, I went on line here, booked them and picked them up at the station, time taken? about 10 minutes maximum. Now, as for India....
Well, about 40 minutes by tuck tuck to the station,(this included a race with another couple who were also vrgin tuck tuck passengers!) then a queue at one kiosk for about 60 minutes to find out about the train and pick up the all important time and name of the train. Dash over to the next kiosk for women, disabled people and the elderley only to pick up our tickets. Thsi queue was also lengthy and full of perfectly able-bodied men; now I spoke no Hindu, but there was perfect communication between several Indian women and Shirley and I about this state of affairs! The elbows came into play and we blocked the men at several stages very effectively, however that too took about 40 minutes!There were about 8 other kiosks in action as well, all with queues of at least a hundred men waiting for tickets, what a system!! The Indians really use their railways.
It might have been an unwieldy set up, but we had the tickets. Catching the train as another matter! Our tickets had practically all our personal details on them and we were told to look for our names on the outside of the carriage, together with our seat numbers. Fine! Have you seen how long those Indian trains are?? Even with help from a lovely gentleman, it took us half an hour of walking the full length of the train, reading the passenger lists on every carriage to find our names.(We were laden down with our rucksacks and it was mid-day, just to add to the discomfort!) All would be well if the name were correctly written out, but that was not quite the case. However, we found our places and settled down for a wonderful trip throughthe countryside to Agra. People were very friendly and quite amused when the Scrabble Board came out, The Chai man even stopped to look as he made his frequent journeys from end to end shouting 'Chai!' in every carriage.
The seats were those firm curved bench shape, covered in shiny leather, but they did the job. We arrived to the welcome of all rickshaw riders wanting to take us to our destination. We dashed out of the forecourt down a side road to escape them! Luckily one of them followed us because we were heading for no-man's land!
My other over-riding memory was our return to Delhi in the dark. We had views of people living in house which can only be described as Hogarthian - parts of the buildings were missing, there was no electricity, and very little by way of home comforts. However, people were seated around fires, eating and talking well into the middle of the night. It was possible to see the shadows of people walking up the steps to parts of rooms that were open to the skies, I presume to go to bed. It was quite an emotional realisation that these people had very little by way of worldly goods but they had everything by way of community living. They were talking together, something that those of us whose houses have all four walls perhaps don't do so much of.
However, what struck me was the difference between this train journey and the last one I took. Did I tell you aabout my train journeys in India? Well, where to start?
Let's consider the tickets, I went on line here, booked them and picked them up at the station, time taken? about 10 minutes maximum. Now, as for India....
Well, about 40 minutes by tuck tuck to the station,(this included a race with another couple who were also vrgin tuck tuck passengers!) then a queue at one kiosk for about 60 minutes to find out about the train and pick up the all important time and name of the train. Dash over to the next kiosk for women, disabled people and the elderley only to pick up our tickets. Thsi queue was also lengthy and full of perfectly able-bodied men; now I spoke no Hindu, but there was perfect communication between several Indian women and Shirley and I about this state of affairs! The elbows came into play and we blocked the men at several stages very effectively, however that too took about 40 minutes!There were about 8 other kiosks in action as well, all with queues of at least a hundred men waiting for tickets, what a system!! The Indians really use their railways.
It might have been an unwieldy set up, but we had the tickets. Catching the train as another matter! Our tickets had practically all our personal details on them and we were told to look for our names on the outside of the carriage, together with our seat numbers. Fine! Have you seen how long those Indian trains are?? Even with help from a lovely gentleman, it took us half an hour of walking the full length of the train, reading the passenger lists on every carriage to find our names.(We were laden down with our rucksacks and it was mid-day, just to add to the discomfort!) All would be well if the name were correctly written out, but that was not quite the case. However, we found our places and settled down for a wonderful trip throughthe countryside to Agra. People were very friendly and quite amused when the Scrabble Board came out, The Chai man even stopped to look as he made his frequent journeys from end to end shouting 'Chai!' in every carriage.
The seats were those firm curved bench shape, covered in shiny leather, but they did the job. We arrived to the welcome of all rickshaw riders wanting to take us to our destination. We dashed out of the forecourt down a side road to escape them! Luckily one of them followed us because we were heading for no-man's land!
My other over-riding memory was our return to Delhi in the dark. We had views of people living in house which can only be described as Hogarthian - parts of the buildings were missing, there was no electricity, and very little by way of home comforts. However, people were seated around fires, eating and talking well into the middle of the night. It was possible to see the shadows of people walking up the steps to parts of rooms that were open to the skies, I presume to go to bed. It was quite an emotional realisation that these people had very little by way of worldly goods but they had everything by way of community living. They were talking together, something that those of us whose houses have all four walls perhaps don't do so much of.
posted by Liz at 23:12
2 Comments:
I would LOVE to have been in your shoes riding on a train to London! How exciting it must have been! I have never been on a train. Around here, it’s not a popular mode of travel.
The trip to India doesn’t sound like my cup of tea. Maybe you could blog one day about the things you found fun because as far as I’ve heard, they seem very demeaning toward women. I’ve also heard that the country in general smells. Does it smell, Liz?
Lots and lots of smells Tami, the awful ones as you might expect - in the crowded cities. But in the country there are lovely smelly plants, the fruits smell wonderful, and of course lots of spices!!
Post a Comment
<< Home