Not Dead, Just in New Orleans.

So, after Nepal it was pretty much just a race to get to London before our time and money ran out. As a result, we had planned to spend more time moving and less lounging on rooftop bars- starting with crossing the Indian subcontinent. We'd booked flights from Mumbai to Turkey, as the middle east is not currently a great place for people with our accents (I understand that some polities are probably fine, but that sounds like a lot of research and I'm not really into that this trip), so the task we set ourselves was an overland crossing of India in ten days, from the fifth to the fifteenth. Train looked like the best option, and according to Chris' research, easily affordable. So when we landed, we took the light rail right to the New Delhi train station.

Sigh.

I want to preface this next part by saying I'm not proud. I don't know if it was fatigue from air travel or overconfidence from weeks and weeks of largely successful ad hoc travel. I am tempted to say it's just India, or at least New Delhi, but to be honest mistakes were made. Mistakes that will now be painstakingly chronicled for your sick twisted amusement, you monsters.

Here we go.

So, we got to the New Delhi train station which is, like, fall of Saigon hectic. Eventually we found a line that looked like what we wanted, until an Indian man in a nice shirt told us this was the line for standing room only tickets. He told us we needed to go to an agency to get seat tickets, gave us an address and called us a cab.

Travelers' pro tip one: never go somewhere on the advice of a stranger. Always do your own research first.

So we took the cab to the address, which I originally was thought a government travel bureau, but was in fact a private travel agency. The man we talked to eventually found tickets for the trips we wanted, Delhi to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, Agra to Goa to be beach bums, Goa to Mumbai cause that's where flights are cheap, for one fifty apiece, which sounded pretty good to me at the time.

Travelers' pro tip two: never make a major purchase without researching the price and requirements yourself in advance.

So we made this major purchase and took a cab to the hotel the agency had arranged for us for the night- despite all our efforts, we couldn't train out that day and had to wait for tomorrow.

In the morning we were picked up by the agency and taken back to the train station, tickets in hand. Well, first and last tickets. There's a thing about that middle ticket we'll get to later. When we got there, the ticket guy looked at our print out and told us there was a problem- we hadn't gotten our seats confirmed yet. We needed to go to another agency where an agent with computer access to the system could assign us seat numbers. He called another cab and gave us another address- this time, actually for the Indian Government Bureau of Tourism. It was there that I learned that what we had been sold were, in fact, wait list tickets- The PNR, the Indian railway system, sells wait list tickets once trains have been completely booked. These tickets entitle you to a seat if enough people with real tickets change their minds. They are only good for the time and train you buy them for, and if you don't get a spot then thank you for your donation to the PNR. I also learned that many travel agencies are closed monday, which coincidentally enough is the day that I called ours to yell at what sounded like a bored intern.

So, here's the thing about the second ticket, the one from Agra to Goa, which at 2,030 kilometers and thirty two hours comprised the vast majority of our trip-

Pro tip 3- never pay for a ticket that you don't have in your hand when you leave

we didn't have it yet. It was to be waiting for us at our hotel in Agra. So, if we couldn't get to Agra, we couldn't get any of our trip tripped. The government man was not optimistic about a refund from the agency either. All buses and trains were fully booked between Delhi and Agra, due to “the festival”. So, we. Hired. A. Car. For two. Huuuunnndred. And sixty eight. D. O. L. L. A. R. S.

I'm going to go lie down for a moment.

*Sigh*

Alright. Like your mother said about the night you were conceived, I'm not proud but it happened.

Anyway, the driver was actually great, and made the four hour trip to Agra a lot more pleasant than it could have been. Once there, we checked into the hotel, got a couple few Kingfishers (the local high gravity beer of choice) and slept the sleep of the deeply bitter. The tickets had not come yet.

New day, new start. Got up bright and early (nineish), got directions to the Taj Mahal which was a mere couple three miles from our squat, and headed off. After circling the Taj (as they say in the industry) a couple times trying to find the ticket booth, helpfully tucked away in a dark corner of an alley that doesn't go past any of the entrances, we were finally seeing an upside to India.

Look, I'm not gonna go on about the Taj Mahal, you already know everything you need too. It is one of the few famous touristy things I've seen that wasn't disappointing in any way. Built as a tomb for the wife of a king, and later that king himself, it is by far the Tajiest of all the Mahals I've ever seen. Here, look.

Look at aaaaalllll that Mahal

When we eventually got back, after hiring a tuk tuk for the last half mile because we get lost easily, the tickets...still had not come. Eventually, after the world's best hotel desk clerk called the agency multiple times and, I can only assume, said terrible terrible things in Hindi (I lurve you desk lady whose name I never learned), we finally got the printouts of the email delivered to the fort we had built in the lobby out of kingfisher bottles, and headed back to bed.

These tickets were, of course, also wait list, but we got lucky and had seats.

Lemme tell you about Indian trains. They're great.

Okay, lemme back up a bit. We had tickets in the sleeper class, which sounds fancy in the west but is actually the crappiest class that lets you sit down. There's no a/c, just a bundle of fans mounted to the ceiling. The cars are made up of a series of walled off cells, but open on the side, so it's really just a series of cubbies, with the open side facing a hallway that runs the length of the train. The cells sleep six, and are about six feet to a side. The way this works is the two benches in them, perpendicular to the hallway, are beds, and four more fold out from the wall, two above each bench, so you end up with two three level bunk beds. 

The quiet elegance of train travel

The windows open, and are left that way for circulation. There are metal bars on the outside to keep things and people on the inside, but since this would be an issue in a crash (something that came sharply to mind when, near the end of the trip, we passed the wreckage of a train that looked suspiciously like ours on the side of the tracks) there were pullcords behind breakincaseof glass that would release the bars and allow them to slide up. Every single pull cord on the train had been activated, and all the bars were out of the way, leaving nothing between you and all of India. And if that was too stuffy still, they left the train doors open so you could sit in the doorways and dangle your feet.

Don't worry Mom, the train was stopped for these.

(No it wasn't. Don't tell Mom)

There's a meal service in the evenings if you want it- biryani, a rice dish, for about a dollar, but in addition to the beggars, electronics vendors, handbag salesmen, chai dealers, and perveyors of zipper pull tabs (just the pull tabs- these guys didn't have anything else for sale) that pass down the hallway, creating more foot traffic than most American downtown cores, there are men who sell enormous samosas for about fifteen cents per. It is hard to go hungry on an Indian train, is what I'm saying.

Guys, Indian trains are just so great.

After thirty six hours on the train and a little bit of improvised translation to ask our cabin mates where we need to be getting off, we finally arrived at the Margao train station, in the middle of the Goa region of India, which appears to be largely made up of various kinds of picturesque beaches. We, of course, got in after midnight with no lodging because we had been too busy stressing over the train ticket. The helpful men at the prepaid cab stand were kind enough to take us to a bungalow style guesthouse at Colva Beach, the closest beach. Colva appears (because of course we went out) to largely be the domain of drunken Russians and ambitious resorts. It was, as I said, off season- monsoon season- so customers were consistently outnumbered by staff members at every establishment, creating a quiet, deeply relaxing atmosphere that can only truly be appreciated by someone who loves going out but hates it when other people do the same near him.

Morning after we got a tuk tuk to drive us up to Baga beach (unlike Bangkok, in India you actually do save money in exchange for the lower crash rating of a tuk tuk vs a cab). The only guide we had to our destination amongst the various ocean front neighborhoods was some writings Chris had read about what a cool scene it was in the seventies. This is the guide that took us to Goa in the first place and eventually, after miles of wandering around the back roads of coastal India under load, to the Road House hostel in Anjuna Beach, adjacent to the town of Anjuna.

Anjuna Beach is mostly dominated by psych and electonica festivals during the season, and rice paddies and stray dogs in the off. Only about one in five business were even open when we went through, and though Anjuna is a proper small town of sorts, with its own post office and Dominoes, the beach area is rural as fuck.

As. Fuck.

We spent 5 nights out there, recuperating from our sojourn and enjoying the quiet lassitude of off season Anjuna, an atmosphere that an best be described as “like the Overlook hotel but tropical. Also no murder ghosts”. 

Soooooo, we had one last train ticket to get confirmed to Mumbai, where our flight over the middle east left from, and this was causing us a little concern. The owner of the Roadhouse, who was the first Indian man to be helpful to us in any major capacity, was nice enough to show us the website that anyone can access from anywhere at any time showing out tickets' status

Protip number five million: if somebody tells you you have to pay to access information, google that shit first

and it was looking dubious that they'd let us on the train. 

So back up a couple days. 

Shortly after we got to Anjuna, we were hailed by a middle aged man named Sanjay who invited us to dinner, saying he was starting a restaurant after the monsoon season and wanted westerners to give opinions. We went over the next day to his house, a half mile from our hostel, cause, hey. Free dinner. Over the course of an evening, Sanjay, in the way that seems to be standard for men in India, repeatedly led the conversation back to various services he can provide for nominal fees. He also has a guesthouse, which we politely declined, and a travel service. When we told him we already had tickets, he asked after their nature, and our tale of woe/comedy of errors (depending on what the outcome was to be) was related. Sanjay, confirming many closely held western stereotypes about India, told us that he could in fact get our tickets confirmed through the power of bribery. See, the PNR holds seats for tourists in reserve, seats that our first travel company (New Delhi Tours. Never use them or allow friends to. Spit on anyone who works for them if you get the chance) failed to take advantage of, presumably because they thrive on the suffering of ignorant foreigners. Sanjay could correct this oversight through, as he explained it, said bribery. This was for, of course, a nominal fee, for both the bribes and the trouble. Since the nominal fee was a thousand rupies, or a little less than eighteen dollars total, we eagerly agreed to give him on thousand rupies upon successful confirmation of our seats.

Protip google quat: learn from your goddam mistakes

This is how we found ourselves, money in hand, drinking chai and refreshing the PNR site on our phones on Sanjay's patio with our ride to the train station waiting on the morning of the thirteenth. True to his word, our tickets went through (whether through his machinations or our luck, I don't really care) and we hopped in the cab, hopped out and got on our last Indian train. This one was shorter, a mere twelve hours, and air conditioned as we had moved up to third class. Honestly, I missed the wind in my hair, but it wasn't bad.

We got to Mumbai around six the next morning, and had until about two the following morning to kill until our flight. Unfortunately we had nowhere to store our bags, so our day of exploring the former Portuguese trading port was somewhat marred by hauling all of our belongings with us. Even so the city is remarkably pretty- situated on the west coast north of Goa, the harbor and the classical European architecture, fused with more recent Indian construction, left me with the surprising desire to go back and actually spend some time there in the future. It is the opposite of my lingering feelings towards Delhi.

Of course, I didn't take any pictures, so you'll just have to trust me on this.

After a long day of wandering aimlessly (our preferred travel style) we finally got a hard-bartered cab to the airport (I still hate bartering, but at least I can do it now) and got our asses onto a flight to the very last stop in our Asian leg- the east half of Istanbul.