lisaland

“If you can cross a road in Mumbai, you can cross any road in the world,” a pedestrian shouted back at us as we dodged the battlefield of rickshaws as if we were dodging bullets in war; his tone indicative of our recent arrival into this assault on the senses. Luckily for us, after surviving the chaos of Mumbai’s railway system, our 18 hour train to Kerala was going to be all the relaxation we needed: first class, baby! We’d booked the luxury tickets and had happily paid the extra 625Rupees for the comfort that we would be spending 18 glorious hours in.
After our taxi driver misunderstood “station” for “beach”, and taught us the value in just how ambiguously convenient the Indian head-wobble can be in any situation you may find yourself in, we made it onto the right platform with only one minor detour this time. Surrounded by tired locals, we waited on a bench in the thickness of the sticky night heat. The first train pulled up with Indians hanging out of every possible opening. It looked more like an industrial steam train that had been designed during the Second World War than anything conducive to carrying actual life. We stayed on the bench, sweating, while swatting the aura of mosquitos away, and watched the train go by, relieved that we’d never be made to travel under such circumstances. The next train pulled up, déjá vu of the earlier scenario: limbs hanging out of every possible gap in a fight for any form of personal space. “Let’s go!” the guy next to me shouted. “Wait, what?” I stumbled. “But my ticket says luxury?” With my bag on my back, my camera around my neck and my hula-hoop on my arm we ran for the open train doors. As we walked down the narrow isle – the same width as a submarine tour I did once - it felt like we’d entered Auschwitz: bodies lay in steel-framed boxes all along the sides. Sure that this wasn’t our carriage, we continued to walk through the stench of urine. We saw our ticket numbers painted on the wall in a post-war typography and with our “luxury” beds less than 30cm from a rusted ceiling fan, and steel bars enclosing us, it felt like we were stolen children being prepared for export.
18 torturous hours later of no food or water, and being the subject of multiple Indian cell phone photos, we arrived in Cochin to a national Indian strike. No transport. No food. No accommodation. If you’re ever planning to travel by Indian railway, don’t be fooled by words such as luxury. And just be prepared. But next time we’ll be flying.