Crazy Train: Part 2

After noisily and awkwardly hoisting my embarrassingly large bag onto a shelf about 5 feet above my head, I sat down to look around.  Each “compartment” had two benches, facing each other, long enough to hold 3 people each.  R pulled me aside and took me to the space between the train cars.  Grinning, he said, “I want to show you something…just so you know.”  He brought me into the bathroom and graciously explained how to properly lock the door, which I’m sure saved me from much embarrassment later on.  I took a quick look around.  It consisted of a hole in the floor of the train, and a bar to hold on to for dear life.  The floor was wet. I forced myself to think it was because they had just hosed it down in preparation for the next trip.  I was a little nervous about the lack of toilet paper, but later I realized that it wasn’t necessary.  The draft created by a moving train evaporates any leftover liquid without extra help from Scott’s two-ply sheets.  Back in my seat, the train began to pull away from the station.  Waving goodbye to R through the bars on the window felt like taking my first ride on a bike without the training wheels.  I knew it was bound to happen, but that didn’t make the road in front of us any less scary.  The journey from Bangalore to Nandyal was about 250 miles, but no one knew exactly when we would get there.  The word on the street said we would reach the station sometime between 9pm and 12am, and that we should just read the name of the stations on the sign as we were pulling in.   That probably would have worked out really well, except that the signs were in Telugu, with no convenient English translations. 


Thanks to a lot of prayers, we met a guy who was born and raised in India, but had been to Boston and even knew of our school!  He was able to help us quite a bit with navigating the train, although we somehow still managed to order two complete dinners and offend so many people by not finishing them. The protocol for throwing away your trash, whether it be food, tin foil, plastic, or metal, is to slyly shove it out the window of the train and then pretend like nothing happened.  Out of sight, out of mind. 

Here are some snapshots from the ride. 

























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