A very long journey

Today is the start of the epic weekend quest to Prakash’s wedding. The wedding is about 80km west of Chennai, and to get there we took the train to Chennai, and then another train to the wedding. The journey to Chennai is approximately 14 hours, some people have told me it is 900km, others 600km, either way it’s quite a journey, and so I was really looking forward to it.

The bus from the office to the station was an experience in itself; Gopal said that it is like going on a rollercoaster, which is true, except that on a rollercoaster you can be fairly confident that you won’t die. Bus drivers only use the brakes when they are within a few centimetres of hitting something, and somehow the buses come to an immediate halt. Otherwise they just sound there horn and expect slower or smaller traffic to get out of the way.

There were about 10 of us travelling together, and we had seats booked in the 2^nd class sleeper carriage. I had no idea what to expect, having visions of spending 14 hours sat upright on a wooden bench trying to sleep. However I was pleasantly surprised, the train is divided into compartments, like they used to be in the UK, but without doors. There is plenty of space to stretch out, and when night comes, the backs of the seats lift up to make a triple bunk bed.

Since India is such an enormous place, any visit to another city generally involves a very long journey; spending several days to get to destinations in northern India is not uncommon. If I had to make this same journey on a British Rail train it’d be cramped and uncomfortable.

On the train getting food is easy, at any given time there are a number of people walking up and down the corridor yelling whatever it is that they are selling, be it tea, coffee, water, snacks, books or pirate DVDs. There are also stops on the way where the trains waits for about 10 minutes which is long enough to go to one of the food stands in the station and buy a biryani.

Getting fresh air is easy as well, all the windows open, and are protected by bars, to stop you falling out. If you really need to fall out you can just step out of the door, which remains open for the whole journey.

One of the most interesting things for me was to see how the landscape changes as we progressed across the country, starting in Kerala, there are Palm trees everywhere, houses are in the gaps between the tress, it’s very lush and green. When I woke up in the morning, we were over half way, and the landscape had become a lot more sparse, brown rather than green, with rocky outcrops and small concrete buildings. Then as we came closer to Chennai the landscape became green again, with sugar cane plantations and rice paddies.

I have some video as well, which I'll add later.