So I think the trip and the plot thickens quite a bit here. Today we left the resort by 7am to attempt to make our 10am train. We thought this would be more than enough time to make arrangement for the train--in case our waitlisted tickets didn't come through, have some breakfast and the rest. We were at the station before 7:30, and the "chart" had still not been prepared. The chart, which informs waitlisted passengers if they've made it, is supposed to be made at least 10-12 hrs. before the train leaves, but in light of the heavy Diwali traffic this was not the case. So we were left waiting until a little less than an hour before the departure of our Patna Express, headed north for Bihar. As we waited we prepared buying water, snacks, and having a bit of our favorite Indian breakfast, Idli or small rice pancakes with coconut chutney and tomato sambar (watery curry). While waiting in the train terminal there was a young family traveling to Chennai, in the south of India, and we quickly made friends with their two young boys. Between our bench of seats and theirs was a young boy who was just sleeping on the floor of the station, unbothered by the loud music, annoucements, people walking just next to him. He wore no shoes, and there was another woman sleeping similarly within 30 yards, and I imagined this was his mother. It was quite humbling to see this boy just sleeping on the floor, without anything for a blanket, no shoes, and totally covered in dirt.
From the waiting room we went to confirm our waitlist. We discovered that although we had moved up the list from 42 &43 to 18&19, but we still didn't make it onto the train. So we asked what we could do to make the train anyway, and we instructed to purchase a general compartment ticket and board the train. So we proceeded and got 2 tickets. We arrived on the platform at least 25 minutes before the train arrived to a line 3 hundred yards long almost completely made up of men. This was the line for the general class--Damn! It was pretty clear it wasn't going to be possible for us, but we tried a loop-hole we learned of from a nice young man, Ambur, who informed us we could board the sleeper class and pay the difference of our general class ticket to a sleeper class ticket, but would have to take whatever seat we found. As we attempted to board a few sleeper class cars we realized there was absolutely no way to ride the train for 28 or more hours to Varanasi. There were mena and women sitting on bags of rice in the entryway of the car, and six to eight people on the bottom bench of berths that are meant to hold only three people.
So we headed back out of the station and called a cab to take us to the airport. While waiting we had the good-fortune to meet a rickshaw wallah who first tried to get us to pay him twice the price for a journey to the airport, then when he realized we weren't going to go with him tried to help us find a cheap bus ticket, and handed us the airport's daily schedule for flights. It was quite interesting to meet someone who first wanted to steal from us and then help us in the same interaction.
Soon after our driver arrived and although he was the smelliest one we've had yet he was also the most kind. He spoke no English or Hindi, only Telugu, so our communication was strictly through our actions. As we made our way to the airport we passed a place that had great fruit, and so he asked in the miniscule English he knew if we would wait 2 minutes. We really had no choice, but he was kind and left the AC on for us as he ran to get pineapples and bananas. The whole thing took a bit longer than he had expected so he brought us back a full bag of bananas. It was very nice. We reached the airport by 11:30am and went straight to the information counter to find out when we could get a flight out.
A helpful young woman found us a flight to Delhi by 5pm tonight, and we will arrive in Delhi by quarter of 7pm. We'll arrive in Varanasi tomorrow afternoon by 12:30pm! Hooray for Diwali in Varanasi.
