With sleep, my appetite returned. Breakfast in the hotel’s dining room was a lot like its American counterparts but with an Indian twist. For example, the mini pancakes would have been at home in any Days Inn in the US. But they were served with honey rather than maple syrup. My favorite new discovery was lychee juice. I had to stop myself from drinking the whole pitcher.
After breakfast I had some time to kill. I took some photos from the window, but then I found a door that opened onto a small balcony. It was raining fairly steadily at that point, so I took a handful of pictures of people passing by in the street below and then darted back inside.
Most of the TV channels were in Hindi. I tried watching the news, but it mostly appeared to be about hangings. I thought maybe I’d stumbled across a morbid hangings-related network by mistake until I read the newspaper and discovered that a group of gang rapists recently had their death sentences confirmed by a court, which was big news.
The only English language channel I could find specialized in romantic comedies. It showed Charlie Chaplin shorts between movies, so those were fun to watch. The movies were all preceded by a certificate from the government’s censorship board and a warning about smoking. They must be serious about the latter, as even during the movies, scenes in which a character lit up were accompanied by a “tobacco kills!” super.
Check out time was 12, and my ride to the train station wasn’t scheduled until 1. So I sat in the lobby for an hour reading and getting caught up on my notes. While waiting, I overheard a young American couple having trouble getting their bank to authorize a card payment for the hotel. Not for the last time during the trip, I found myself grateful that most of my expenses were pre-paid.
Delhi was shrouded in rain and mist the entire time I was there. As if simply being there wasn't surreal enough. The ride to the train station was visually overwhelming. The small shops. The parks. The homeless camps. I could spend a month there and barely scratch the surface.
When we arrived at the station, I was extremely fortunate to have the assistance of the India Footprints employee who helped me navigate the system. I would never have figured out the ticketing or found my train compartment without him. He also had a sack full of lunch and water bottles prepared for me. I hadn’t even thought about food, so I was glad to have the help.
The train compartment was set up for four people to be able to sleep in it, though I had only one fellow traveler. He turned out to be a college professor who’d recently returned from a teaching job in Malaysia. We had a long conversation about several topics, including what Monsanto (based in St. Louis, so not far from home) had done to Indian agriculture.
The area south of the train station was the first slum I saw. Despite the obvious, terrible poverty, many of the buildings and even improvised shelters had satellite dishes. The compartment’s window was too grimy for good photos, so I should have gone to the open area between train cars and taken pictures. Though I would have needed to spend the entire trip there to get pictures of everything worth photographing.
In particular, a lot of the countryside was covered with vast fields of mustard plants. They looked like new wheat back in Kansas except that the plants were topped with tiny yellow flowers. I also noted that the stacks of railroad ties were made of concrete rather than wood. My professor friend said the British used wood when they directed the original construction of the railways, but that now concrete was considered better.
He departed around 6:30, and after that I had the whole compartment to myself. Dinner was delicious, especially for the Indian equivalent of a sack lunch. The toilets proved to be an interesting experience, though. The first one I tried was a non-western set up, so basically a hole in the floor. Knowing I didn’t have the practice to defecate in such an arrangement, I was relieved to find a more familiar facility in the next car over.
After the sun set and the sightseeing gave way to darkness, I divided my time between note-taking, reading and dozing. Somewhere around 10:00 the conductor stopped by and showed me how to lock the compartment door.
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