Around India in 80 Trains (39 page)

Gaurav was wringing his hands when I checked out the next day and refused to make eye contact. But he soon placated himself, Ben told me later, after finding a group photo from the Golden Chariot that I had dropped in my room that he then framed in reception.

The Narmada Express to Katni, Madhya Pradesh, was due to leave just after 4pm so Passepartout and I set up camp on the platform and watched as a family made its way across the footbridge carrying a toddler. She had kohl-rimmed eyes, slender gold hoops in her ears and a lightning bolt split her top lip into her nose. They put down their bags and boxes, slid off the platform onto the tracks and picked their way over to the train. It was the first day of the screening for cleft lips. Two men linking pinkie fingers made their way down the platform and flashed crooked smiles before jumping onto the tracks and joining the group.

At the last possible moment we boarded, and as train 61 pulled out, my heart thumped heavily against my chest, drowning out the clanking wheels. From the window I could just see the end of the rainbow on the side of the train, the pot of gold of the Indian Railways.

17 | A Taste of Rocky Road Ice Cream

In India things happen when you least expect them. It was part of what made travelling around the country a constant source of both shock and delight. As little as one cow lingering on the tracks could delay numerous services, and during bad weather, it was not unknown for drivers of old trains to stop and wipe the windscreen with a cloth. For that reason our plan at the start of the trip was to have no plan, to avoid constant battle against the country’s orchestrated chaos. It was easier to take a deep breath and allow the current to drag us at will.

Arriving in Katni, we discovered that it was three days before the next available train to Delhi. Nineteen trains remained and we had still not reached Udhampur. The fixation on reaching the northernmost tip of the railways had begun to drain the dregs of my sanity. In the last few days Udhampur had morphed in my psyche into India’s answer to the Elysian Fields, where, as Homer wrote in
The
Odyssey
: ‘No snow is there, nor heavy storm, nor ever rain …’ which for the Himalayas, was most unlikely.

Rather than waste three precious days, we found a hotel and decided to take the Mumbai-Howrah Mail the following day to Allahabad, hoping that once we arrived we would find a suitable connection to Delhi. After watching a bit of TV, I placed water glasses over the family of cockroaches in the bathroom and climbed into bed just as the power failed. The fan came to a silent halt, bringing the night-time bumps and groans of the hotel to a crescendo. Gazing at the map by torchlight, I pulled the covers over my knees using the hairy blanket to rub the welts left by mosquitoes humming around my ear. Even the purple patch representing the state of Jammu and Kashmir appeared to me now in the shape of a four-leafed clover … fields of which would fill the valleys where I could run in bare feet, strumming a lyre, chiffon caressing my ankles …’

Passepartout thumped on the door and I sat up in the darkness, my torch on the floor. He had gone outside for a cigarette and got locked out on the balcony, while I had fallen asleep face down in my map.

‘Rickshaaaaaaa … rickshaaaa …
tinglinglinglingling
…’

Outside Allahabad Junction a cycle rickshaw driver rang his bell and swerved over, curling his bike around us as we walked towards the exit. A fresh ticket for the Allahabad Duronto Express to Delhi, lay pressed between the pages of my logbook and momentary relief tempered my madness.

‘Where going?’ he asked, winding around us in a figure of eight.

‘Just across the road.’ I replied, as he swayed his head, following the curve of his wheels. He looked like an Indian version of Manuel from
Fawlty Towers
, a weasly mix of teeth, moustache and perplexity.

‘I take you,’ he said.

‘No, thank you, we’re okay,’ I replied as Passepartout strode on ahead.

‘I take you,’he repeated.

‘No, we’re fine, thank you.’

‘Forty rupees,’ he bargained.

Passepartout whirled round. ‘We don’t want your rickshaw!’

‘Thirty rupees,’ he continued, undeterred.

‘No, thank you.’ I giggled.

‘Twenty rupees,’ he grinned, pedalling alongside me.

‘No, thank you, really.’

‘For free!’ he offered, standing up on his pedals like a 1980s BMXer.

We both knew that I had no excuse for refusing him. We both also knew that I was a pushover and would offer him baksheesh at the end of the journey. If anything he deserved a reward for ingenuity. I shrugged and stopped. Beaming, he helped me in, struggling with my rucksack as it sank into the canopy of his rickshaw causing the front wheel of his bike to lift up. He waved a hand behind to make sure I would not fall out and began to ride slowly behind Passepartout, keeping close to his ankles and jingling his bell softly. Refusing to overtake Passepartout, who walked ahead, he turned around and flashed me a wicked smile.

Eventually we stopped before crossing the main road and Passepartout climbed in, hugging his bags. Less than 20 seconds later we pulled up outside the hotel and I went inside to ask for a room. A moment later I came out and hopped back in. It was almost twice our budget and had a crow in the bathroom. Taking it in turns, Passepartout tried the next hotel and was turned away. After nine attempts even the driver was beginning to lose his humour and breathe in alarming rasps. His once yellow T-shirt was now blotched with sweat, turning it a dirty mustard colour. It was a Friday night but it seemed impossible that every hotel in Allahabad should be full.

‘I don’t think they like white people around here.’ Passepartout declared finally.

By this point I had silently reached the same conclusion and decided to test out the theory. At the next hotel the driver dropped me off and parked away from the entrance.

‘How many?’ the owner asked.

‘Two.’

‘Where is the other?’

‘Outside. Do you have a room?’

He refused to answer.

‘Where is the other guest?’

‘Outside with the bags. But do you have a room?’

Stepping out from the desk, the man peered out of the doorway and saw Passepartout smoking with the driver.

‘No. We are full,’ he replied.

Whether Allahabad’s hoteliers had a revulsion towards white males, or they were just more accustomed to recognising a psycho than I was, not one allowed us in. Desperation kicked in and at the next hotel I pleaded with the owner whose idea of air conditioning was a window that faced a brick wall. It was now more than two hours since the driver had made the fateful move of engaging with two people who had, so far, managed to rack up a spectacular run of bad luck travelling together. However, if his internal pedometer was clocking up the distance, he was due a hefty donation towards his work. Gasping for air, water and release from our clasp, the man dragged round his rickshaw and took us back to the first hotel.

The room was still available. And the crow had gone.

Unravelling as many 100-rupee notes as we could find, we stuffed the money into his hands as he smiled through streams of sweat that could have been tears, and wheeled his bike off into early retirement.

The following night, after a visit to the old Nehru family home, a plate of chicken neck biryani, and an obligatory fight at the holy ghat at Sangam, we boarded train 63, the Duronto to Delhi. Not a speck marked the walls or sheets. The taps shone and the floors gleamed with clinical levels of cleanliness. It seemed to have rubbed off on the passengers who had placed all their rubbish in bags, slid between the sheets and gone to sleep without fuss. The moment my cheek touched the pillow I fell asleep and slept my first full night on an Indian train without waking once.

Delhi’s sun had risen in far too jubilant a mood for my eyes. It was barely 7am and the slumber was slow to wear off. At the station restaurant I spread out the map to plot out the onward route. Someone had once told me that the map of India looked like a lady wrapped in a sari, raising her left arm. Following her arm to the fingertip, my own finger arrived on the purple square marking Tinsukia in Assam. I had not heard back from the three friends with whom I had travelled to Chennai and was annoyed that the smug woman in the adjoining compartment had been right all along, but more annoyed with myself for believing them. Passepartout was unsure if he wanted to come along and wandered off to nose around Delhi while I had one final stop to make.

She took off her glasses and looked at me. ‘Are you still here?’

‘Yup.’

‘Give me.’ Anusha said, holding out her hand.

‘I now need to get to Udhampur.’

‘I thought you went?’

‘No, we changed that and I went to Chennai.’

‘Okay,’ she typed in a few numbers and pursed up her lips, which I knew now was part of the performance. ‘I can give you second tier in the Rajdhani that leaves tonight.’

‘Let’s do it.’

‘Then?’

‘I want to go to Gorakhpur and then across to Tinsukia and then to Ledo.’

‘Gorakhpur?’

‘Yes, I found a scribble in the back of my logbook that says Gorakhpur to Nautanwa and I’m not really sure why, but I want to go and find out.’

‘You will need to come back to Delhi and take a train up to Gorakhpur, but the other ticket you buy when you get to Gorakhpur, it will be a short journey.’ She sighed, blowing her aniseed breath at me. ‘Then?’

‘Then I need to get to New Jalpaiguri and across to Tinsukia and then back to New Jalpaiguri because I want to take the toy train up to Darjeeling.’

Anusha wrote down the sequence then eyed me. ‘Heard from your friend?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh-ho!’ She whooped. ‘Where is he?’

‘Here in Delhi actually.’

‘Oh God then he will come and ask for the same trains and I will have to lie and pretend I don’t know.’

‘It’s fine, I really don’t mind if you put him on the same trains.’

‘I will give him different compartment,’ she grinned.

With one final push her printer strained out the last of the tickets. It was on the brink of death, largely due to our visits. Handing over the tickets, Anusha pushed up her glasses and tipped her head to one side, the stripe of kumkum still flaming in her parting. I took the tickets and thanked her.

It was the last time I would see Anusha.