A Night On The Punjab Mail

An hour before my train is due to depart I pay my hotel bill, cross the road and buy a bottle of water and some Wills Classics from one of the street hawkers, then take a cycle-rickshaw that will take me to Lucknow station . I find my name posted on the noticeboard on platform 1: coach S1, compartment C, Upper Berth; the carriage is marshalled 3 back from the engine - perfect. Unlike Allahbad, the platform is clearly displayed, and there are constant " For your kind attention...." announcements over the tannoy. Train 3006 - The Amritsar-Howrah Punjab Mail - is running 30 minutes late; it has already travelled 700 kms through the dense passenger and freight traffic of the Northern Railways coalfields area, and I'm surprised is not later than it is. I buy a bottle of water and drink a chai while I wait. The Punjab Mail pulls into the station behind a single blue and silver WDM; with a 24 coach train of 1,200 tons it is at the very limit of it's haulage capacity: an express train of this weight would normally have a pair of diesels at the front, and the WDM will need every bit of it's 3,300 horsepower to get it up to any speed.
The carriage attendant is waiting at the door of S1 with the reservation list; he checks-off my name and walks me along the corridor to compartment C. It is a 2-berth Coupe in the first class section of the carriage; there are only two other 4-berth compartments in this section - the rest of the coach - separated by a door - is 2-berth air-conditioned sleeper class. The coupe is spacious and comfortable; it has a vanity mirror on the wall, a table for each passenger, and a small wardrobe. As I stow my bag under the table, my travelling companion arrives with a cooli carrying his luggage; he is an elderly Indian gentleman; he is very quiet and well-mannered; and thankfully seems not to want any conversation. As the train pulls out of Lucknow, we take our seats on the lower berth - he reading the paper in the corner near the corridor, while I sit in the window with my notebook on the table. The back of the lower berth will be folded down to make a bed after 9pm; until this time I have use of it as a seating area, after which time I may only use my upper berth.
The door slides open; the pantry car boy asks if I would like lunch. I order the vegetarian meal, which arrives as we reach the outskirts of the city: Aloo Zeera, Dal, rice, 4 chapatis and some lime chutney. It has been cooked at Lucknow station, and picked-up by the Mail's pantry car staff; it is extremely inexpensive and surprisingly good.
I walk down to the end vestibule, open the door and smoke a Wills Classic sitting on the step with my feet resting on the steps outside. The carriage attendant appears behind me.
"You must hold on with door open", he says with an edge of panic in his voice. He points to a Hindi/English sign on the wall outside the toilet compartment - 'Footboard riding is dangerous and should not be encouraged'. If a Westerner fell from the open door of his first class coach, he would be in serious trouble. He folds down the little jumpseat outside his cupboard-sized Train Attendant's compartment, and asks me to: "please sit down". I apologise, sit down in his seat, and tell him that I will not fall out of the train, and will be very careful.
The line across Uddar Pradesh is level and straight. The WDM rattles along at a steady 60mph, it's smoke and noise filling the open vestibule. We stop at several small stations to allow other passenger trains to pass, and while we wait I climb down onto the platform and walk up to the locomotive. The WDM, with its ALCO 251 engine, has a strange, rumbling tick-over; it sounds like some huge, deep-chested animal snoring with slow breaths: chug-chug-chug-CHUG-chug-chug. The design dates back to the 1960s, long before electronic fuel management systems appeared; the WDM uses a mechanical governor to regulate the flow of diesel to the engine - and this is what gives it the uneven tickover. I walk back to my coach, and stand in the open doorway on the far side. Passengers from the crowded unreserved coaches have climbed down onto the tracks to smoke, wait and relieve themselves. Suddenly there is a shout and someone points to a dot that has appeared on the horizon. There is a mad scramble to get back on the train, even though our WDM hasn't blasted it's horns to signal departure. Within a few seconds the dot has turned into a Jumbo - a strange hybrid, part WDM, part full-cabbed passenger locomotive - rocketing towards us at 70mph with an express in tow. It passes in a storm of noise and exhaust fumes, airhorns locked on full; it is an awesome sight, but not one you would want to witness at track-level.
We get a clear signal and move off. I lean from the door and listen to the blatting exhaust note of the WDM. They really are quirky machines: they tick-over at 300rpm - barely turning - and reach maximum power at just 1000rpm - hardly more than a car's petrol engine at idle. The ALCO engine uses sheer brute force rather than speed to turn the generator that drives the electric traction motors; the huge pistons slug away like a heavyweight boxer, each blow accompanied by a massive blat from the exhaust. Then there's the lurch effect produced by the electro-mechanical relays switching. The WDM will accelerate to 30mph using the first relay - something like the dimmer-switch on your living-room light, limiting the amount of current to the traction motors to prevent the wheels simply spinning - before it changes over to the second relay and produces full power. These relays take a several seconds to switch over -they're linked to the power-handle, so this happens automatically as it is pulled wide-open - and train starts to slow down while the engine drops back to idle. Then the second relay kicks in, putting full load back onto the ALCO engine, and the speed suddenly picks-up again. This lurch is what produces the thick clouds of black exhaust fumes, too - something the WDMs are noted for.
I chat to the Train Attendant about his job while he shows me the little room in the vestibule where he sleeps, taking turns with the Train Conductor. It is 4 feet wide and 6 feet long; there is a metal locker against the wall and a thin mattress covered with a sheet takes up the entire floorspace. There is no window. The train left Howrah five days ago - as number 3005 - scheduled to depart at 7pm on it's 2000km trek to Amritsar. After a lay-over of eight hours it then started the return leg as train number 3006 - The Punjab Mail. The Attendant will have been on the train for 6 days - including delays - before he gets home to Kolkata for his one day off - living in his small compartment, eating, sleeping and working on the move. I ask him if he likes his work; he smiles and says:"It's my job."
The pantry car boy comes around as we reach Rae Bareli and I ask for a vegetarian dinner; the food orders will be passed to Rea Bareli who will call them through to the next providing station; the meals are prepared at Varanasi and loaded into the pantry car during the 7.30pm stop. I eat my Dal and rice as the train crawls across the Ganges bridge, then sit in the vestibule jumpseat with the door open and smoke. It is pitch dark outside, just the flicker of the odd cooking fire penetrating the gloom.
I go back to the coupe and find that the Train Attendant has made up the bunks. The old gentleman is sleeping, so I turn off the overhead lights, quietly climb up to my bunk, and open my book under the glow of the reading light.
The trains swaying, rolling motion is more pronounced up in my berth; the WDMs airhorns and exhaust clearly audible above the track-noise inside the closed compartment.
I cannot sleep. I slip out of the compartment and walk down to the vestibule; the Attendant is fast asleep in his tiny cell. I open the door, sit on the step with my Wills Classics, and footboard ride into the early hours. Exhausted, I lie on my bunk and eventually fall into a parody of sleep.

I wake at 5.00 to a tickling on my left forearm; I flick the cockroach off and watch in dismay as it ricochets off the wardrobe door and lands in one of the highly polished black shoes the Indian gentleman has partially tucked under his lower berth.
At 5.30am we reach Asansol; there is a local passenger train waiting alongside the Mail, one of the carriage doors perfectly lined up opposite mine. The train is empty. I climb over and look inside: bare metal floor covered in spit, bits of stale food, drifts of rubbish in the corners; pale yellow paint flaking off the walls; barred open windows; it is filthy and has no toilet other than the floor and the tracks outside at station stops. The smell of decay and human excreta snags in the back of my throat. The carriage is identical to the two unreserved coaches infront of mine, except that they are packed full of people. Last night - from the comfort of my first class air-conditioned coach - I watched a young man jump onto the footboards as the train pulled out of a station; there was so many people in the coach that they were spilling out of the open doors. The young man was clinging to the side of the train, balanced on tiptoes, only able to hold on with his left hand; I timed the next stop at 23 minutes - covered at speeds of between 40 and 60mph. I hope he made it.
The Mail reaches Howrah - one of Kolkata's two main stations - at 10.45am, more than three hours late. I am bleary-eyed, lank-haired and unshaven. I have spent 22 hours on the Mail and travelled 1000kms across Uddar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. I thank the Train Attendant and Conductor and walk down the platform in the hot sunshine. They will be on another gruelling 6 day haul to Amritsar the day after tomorrow; I will be exploring their home city.

News Of The World

I order a coffee in my room and read The Times Of India - otherwise known as TOI - that has been slipped under my door while I slept. 'Eight Killed In Train Accident', a short piece in a side-bar on page five. A coal train in Ranchi derailed as it crossed a bridge on Friday night on it's way to Panipath; the brake van, guards van and two wagons fell into the rivulet below, taking the eight people 'travelling unauthorisedly' in them to their deaths. Most of them were in the brake van; the Divisional Railway Manager is trying to 'ascertain if any more are still trapped'. Was this the same derailment I passed on the way to Allahbad? I take a cycle-rickshaw to Hazratganj and find an internet cafe. Halfway along Vidhan Sabha Marg we pass the state government's palatial seat of power; the enormous white building isn't marked on my map, or any others I come across. The security is stupendous: sand-bagged machine-gun emplacements; military, police and Rapid Reaction Force units ringing the high, broken-glass topped wall, armed to the teeth with every light weapon imaginable; water-canon trucks and jeeps with racks of tear-gas launchers. There is enough firepower to start - or finish - a full scale war; perhaps that is exactly what they are expecting. I spend the day working at the internet cafe, breaking off for an hour to walk down to the Royal Cafe for lunch; I order some chicken Tikka, salad, popads and chutneys, and watch a group of plump, middle-aged Indian women in expensive saris playing a game of bingo at their table on the other side of the room. One of them calls the numbers in precise, mechanical, nasal English, while the rest mark their home-made cards; I wonder if one will shout "haveli" rather than house - they are obviously well-to-do. There is an air of tension in Lucknow, too; it has nothing to do with an influx of pilgrims and the associated threat of terrorism, but everything to do with the state elections. Stories of corruption are rife; the opposition parties have mobilised student and peasant support. There has been trouble: clashes between demonstrators and the security forces. The TOI reports that the police have instigated a shoot-on-sight policy in the worst affected neighbourhoods. As I walk back to the internet cafe, groups of young men shout "Hallo", or hiss at me then laugh amongst themselves. A beaten-up white Toyota slows next to me; a fat man in a black leather jacket mouths something at me in a low voice from his open window, threatening words spat from thick, moist lips, eyes filled with hate under a quiff of oily black hair. I dodge my way through the insane mix of rickshaws, Vikrams, handcarts and tongas thronging the street and walk through a lane on the opposite side. It is hot and dry, the temperature creeping up day by day, nudging 30 degrees.
I finish at the internet cafe and take a cycle-rickshaw back to Charbagh. Just before Lucknow station I see the Northern Railways Officers Club; it is almost a scaled down version of the government building - a gleaming, opulent and exclusive edifice. Tender Notice No 01/2007 in the TOI - placed by Northern Railways - invites 'approved' contractors to bid for 'Various Types Of Work'. Indian railways are state owned: they spend public money and are obliged to publish tender notices for every procurement. The list of work includes improvements to Officer's Bungalows - replacement of the mosaic tiles in their bathrooms, new roofs, resurfaced parking areas; provision of a wooden shed at the swimming pool; new flooring for the badminton court; repairs to the cricket pitch. The list goes on. Costs are estimated in millions of Rupees; for each section of the tender, 'Earnest Money' is required from the bidder - hundreds of thousands of Rupees to be paid to Northern Railways by the contractor who gets the work. On the road outside The Railway Officer's Club people live in shacks made from scavenged bits of plastic and cardboard tied to stick frames; the even less fortunate sleep on the station platforms, dressed in rags, begging for a few Rupees. How can state-funded extravagance be justified while people starve and die in the street outside?
I drink a Kingfisher at the Deep Palace Hotel. A young, well-dressed man enters the bar and walks unsteadily to the counter; he orders a White Mischief vodka and stares at me. I ignore him. D-5 Bungalow, Sector 31, Noida village: the remains of more than 30 bodies - mostly children - are found in and around the building. Hacked-up torsos in the bedroom and kitchen, the drainage ditch outside filled with heads and limbs. Of the adult victims, only the body of the maid is positively identified. Organ-trading and sexual abuse is mentioned. The police ignored the missing person reports made by local people: they made no investigation into the disappearances; they took no action whatsoever.
"Can I sit?". The drunk young man is at my table. I tell him no, but he begins to pull out a chair anyway. I stand up, lean across the table and push it back into place.
"I do not want you to sit at my table", I tell him, "so just go away". He stands back at the counter drinking more vodka, swaying slightly and looking at me resentfully. When he leaves, he turns back to hurl some verbal abuse at me. I ignore him.
I walk back to my hotel and take the TOI down to the dingy basement bar. I order a Kingfisher as three Indian men sit down at the table next to mine. I check their drinks - Silky Stallion vodka, McDowell's rum and Haywards 5000 Super Strong Beer - and avoid looking in their direction.
A senior police officer dies in a suspicious 'road crash' in Allahbad; he was investigating a 'sensitive' case involving a cabinet member when the 'accident' happened.
"You must join us", the older of the trio calls over to me, "I will pay your bill. Please come and sit". I tell him thank you, but no; I notice this advertisement in the TOI: 'Do you need a Private Detective? If so contact: Introspective Detectives Private Ltd.' My laugh is cut short by the persistent man at the next table:
"You must come to my home. You must meet my family. I have motorbike and it is only ten-minute drive". He is very drunk. I tell him not to bother me again, closing the TOI on an advertisement from The Northeastern Coalfields offering whole trainloads of coal to anyone who can afford the 2455 Rupees per Tonne - 10 rakes at 2,500 Tonnes each - including rail haulage.
The man at the next table will not leave me alone - he is pleading and begging for me to come to his house.
"Please, please come. Just stay for one minute," he whines. "Why should you worry? You have no bag with you, no big money." He can see my daypack on the seat next to me, and saw the camera that I quickly put back into it as he sat down; I also have 15,000 Rupees in my safety-wallet. He is drunk, unpleasant and irritating. I call the waiter for my bill; he apologises and says he is ashamed of the trio's behaviour. I gather my bag and stand infront of the men's table:
"Thank you so much for spoiling my evening," I tell them. "Are you satisfied with yourselves?" All three of them stare down at the table; the older one begins some high-pitched, maudlin apology. I cut him off: "I thought not."
I order a vegetable Thali in my room and re-pack my bag for the morning train; the room-service waiter brings a bottle of Kingfisher, too - a gift from the barman who shook his head as I left the bar, murmuring: "Indians and drink - no good."

Escape From Civil Lines

I have most of the day to kill before my train. I leave my bag in the hotel luggage room and go to The Indian Coffee House on MG Marg, where the waiters dash between tables in white Dhotis with trays of glasses filled with coffee and chai. It is a huge, airy place with enormous ceiling fans and faded blue walls; there are no women here at all: the coffee house is a male preserve. I walk over to The Big Bazaar. It is a modern shopping mall with one department store, dozens of half-finished empty units, and a McDonalds. Guards armed with assault rifles eye me casually as I check my daypack in before entering, removing everything of value as advised by a large sign over the counter. I order a McAloo Tikki burger for lunch; it arrives twenty minutes later and tastes of nothing other than unidentifiable spices, swimming in a bland Tikka sauce the consistency of non-drip gloss. I buy a sturdy brass padlock and a length of chain in the department store to secure my bag on the train, then collect my daypack and get my luggage from The Bungalow. I take a cycle-rickshaw to Allahbad Junction and check the dot-matrix display for train number 2506 - The North East Express, due to depart at 3.45pm; as I walk over to platform 8, I notice 2506 displayed above the stairs down to platform 4, and a handwritten sign indicating platform 1. I ask one of the train controllers at the enquiries desk which is the correct platform, and I am told to go to platform 5; while I trudge back across the long footbridge, the station announcement system goes down: my only reliable source of information is replaced by a shrill Indian voice repeating 1-2-3-4-5- test-test-test-5-4-3-2-1 into the microphone. I wait on the bridge between platforms four and five and read the destination boards on the carriages of the two trains that arrive, neither, of which is 2506. I walk back to platform 1 and check the departures screen again: The North East Express has disappeared completely. It has probably slipped out of some distant platform while I waited pointlessly on the footbridge. I give up and leave the station: it is now 6pm. I go to the booking center and spend an hour working through Trains At A Glance, filling out reservation slips, queuing, being turned back because the train is full, reworking permutations and going back to the counter again. I finally get a reservation on The Amritsar-Howrah Punjab Mail by booking a seat on The Ganga Gompti Express back to Lucknow to make the connection; it means another day in Allahbad and a further two in Lucknow, and I am forced to buy the only remaining First Class Sleeper berth. I take a cycle-rickshaw back to The Tourist Bungalow; it is full of people in town for the Mela. I spend the next hour trying all the hotels and guesthouses I can find; everything decent is full, and I finally accept a grotty room at The Milan Hotel at an extortionate 660 Rupees. I walk down to the Tandoor restaurant and treat myself to a chicken tikka biryani, then pick up a couple of bottles of Kingfisher and go back to my grim, depressing cell.
I waste the morning trying to work at an internet cafe; it has three slow PCs, none of which have a CD drive or USB port. The connection fails every few minutes, and there are constant power-cuts. I walk through Civil Lines to The Allahbad Regency and sit in the garden bar with my notebook, slowly sipping an ice-cold Kingfisher beneath the tall palms, the white uniformed waiters gliding across the neatly clipped lawn infront of my table. Just along the street from The Regency I passed a large crowd gathered around a building site. There was a strange, unpleasant smell in the air, and a lot of security guards keeping people back as a gang of coolis dug into a mound of rubble at the side of the half-finished building. I check the Times at The Regency: an unknown number of labourers were buried when the side of the building collapsed two days ago. Corruption and sub-standard materials are cited, and nearby residents are complaining about the smell of decaying bodies. I take a cycle-rickshaw to Allahbad City Station. We are stopped at a crossroads as a procession to the Sangam passes by. The police cordon the road off with a length of rope, blowing their whistles, screaming at people to get back, smashing their Lachtis - thick bamboo sticks - across the bonnets of auto-rickshaws, denting panels and breaking off mirrors. There are guns everywhere - bolt action Lee Enfields, AK-47s, shotguns, Armalites, Sten guns, revolvers, pistols - and the tension is palpable. Convoys of colourful floats snake across the junction, speaker systems blaring music and prayers, dignitaries and pilgrims standing on their open decks.
I sit on a bench on platform 1 at Allahbad City with a bottle of mineral water, scanning the station for possible picture angles. Across the tracks a transit camp has been set up for the pilgrims, row upon row of safari tents, and security is tight. In the distance I hear crump-crump-crump - shotgun blasts, some trouble down near the Sangam ground - and the guards finger their weapons nervously.
"From which country?" An officer from the RPF ( Railway Protection Force ) is standing infront of my bench, arms folded behind his back. I tell him.
"What are you doing here?" I make up a story about trying to find a train to Howrah, and explain that I will go to Allahbad Junction and try there once I have rested for a few minutes. He is small, neat and intelligent, and clearly doesn't believe a word I say. A group of guards and onlookers have crowded around the bench by now; I try to remain as relaxed and friendly as possible, and offer to show him my passport.
"That is not necessary", he says in his clipped, heavily accented English. He leans over me: "You have consumed some whisky?"
"No" I reply, my throat suddenly very dry.
"Some rum?"
"I drank one beer at The Regency earlier. I do not drink strong liquor", I tell him with rising panic. "Is there a problem?" I ask him.
He turns on his heel without another word and marches off in the direction of the RPF headquarters in a compound at the end of the station. The guards and onlookers start to wander off, but not very far, and after a few minutes I gather my bag and bottle of water and walk leisurely down the platform to the exit. I expect to be stopped at any moment, and I have to force myself not to hurry and attract attention. I wave a 50 Rupee note at a rickshaw wallah and climb into the seat without any negotiation: "Civil Lines. Go. Now".
I use my map to direct him off the main road and through the Ox-herder's quarter; there are stables and paddocks full of beasts being bucket washed by coolis, scores of women gathering dung to flatten and dry at the roadside, serried ranks of two-foot long dung-sticks along the verge ready to be used as fuel. A river of effluent flows down a culvert at the edge of the narrow lane; the smell is overpowering but there are no guns or guards. I hide eight floors up in the Khana Shyam for an hour, and then creep back to my awful room.
I eat at Tandoor and walk over to The Cold Beer Shop. I am standing in the shadows at the side of the bar with a Kingfisher, out of the way of the jostling crowd of Indians at the counter, when a jeep with blue flashing lights pulls off MG Marg onto the dirt infront of the shack. The shopkeeper shakes his head worriedly at me, the fear in his eyes clear to see. Suddenly the drinkers at the counter are wheeling away as policemen swarm out of the jeep and wade into them, Lachtis flailing, smashing bottles off the counter, pushing them backwards into the dust with a violent shove in the chest from the end of their thick sticks. I drop everything and dodge through the rubbish piled at the back of the shack, between a couple of parked-up Ambassadors, and walk quickly along the parallel service road, keeping in the shadows. I look behind me and see the jeep pulling around the back of the shack behind me. I cut right, cross the mud strip, and push my way through the pedestrians at the side of the road; I take my life in my hands and walk straight out into the mad traffic - tyres screeching, horns and bells all around me - and zigzag across MG Marg as fast as I can. I don't know how I make the other side without being hit by anything. I go back to the safety of my disgusting room and lock and bolt the door; I have no idea why the Cold Beer Shop was raided - there is nothing illegal about it. It is a long time before I can sleep.
I wake at 4am, dress quickly and gather my bags. The reception desk is unstaffed, the lobby dark. Three blanketed forms are sleeping on the floor, and I gently nudge one of them awake with the toe of my boot: "Check-out", I tell him quietly.
"No check-out", he mumbles and goes back to sleep. I try one of the others, but get no response. I have left a deposit of 500 Rupees - far too much for the quality of the room - and owe another 160; I also have a train to catch. The idea of missing it and being stuck here again is enough to make up my mind: there is no-one to pay the money to, and simply leaving it with the key is out of the question - it would disappear in an instant, and I would have no receipt. The front door is unlocked. Anyone could walk in off the street while the three guards sleep. I place the key on the desk and walk out into the dark, cold morning; I find a cycle-rickshaw and reach Allahbad Junction station at 5.15am. My only hope is that the hotel won't pursue the matter of 160 Rupees, knowing full well they have already ripped me off for 500; however, they do have my passport details and onward destination, and a phone call to RPF at Lucknow would be all it would take to cause me some real problems. I go straight to the Train Controllers office and find my train waiting at platform 9, just as they said it would be. I double-check with the Conductor then buy a hot chai from one of the wallahs, which I drink by the open door to my carriage. The station is quiet at this hour, and I watch dozens of rats scuttling around the platforms, nosing in the stinking drifts of waste, scurrying into holes if a coolis footsteps come too close. The bright orange WDM at the head of the train rumbles at a slow tick-over, the headlight slicing out into the misty darkness; behind it, the unreserved coaches are packed solid, people hanging from the doorways, faces pressed against the barred windows. I would like to photograph the early morning scene, but my shredded nerves won't allow me to take the risk. I place my empty mud cup on a low wall; there is litter everywhere and no bins, but I can't bring myself to do as the locals do and simply throw it to the ground the moment I have finished with it. An RPF guard stops me as I go to board the train. He points at my cup: "Why do you just leave this here?" He seems genuinely offended by my seemingly thoughtless behavior. I apologise and he tells me to throw it onto the tracks instead: it lands with a splash in a stinking pool of sewage that has been squat-jettisoned from the platform edge by passengers wrapped in thin sheets to preserve the privacy of their pulled-down dhoti pants and raised saris, surrounded by ripped plastic bags, rotting half-eaten food, bits of paper and vermin-gnawed chicken bones. The guard is satisfied with this. My paranoia is in full flight; I am sure I will be picked-up and questioned about the unpaid hotel balance or my appearance at Allahbad City station. Just before departure, three RPF guards with sub-machineguns enter the coach; my blood freezes. They pay little attention to me as I sit and wait for the train to leave, a knot of tension in my stomach, and stay onboard as we leave Allahbad Junction behind and cross the Ganges. I arrive in Lucknow at 1pm; there are no RPF guards waiting for me on the platform. I check into the Deep Avadh again. They recognise me and ask with some surprise: "You like our hotel?". I tell them yes, adding the lie that although I said I was going to Darjeeling when I completed the Foreign Registration form last time, I must now go to Delhi instead. I will pick fictitous onward destinations at random from now on, and never let any hotel know where I am going next. I wash and change, then walk back through the lobby to the bar. I order a Kingfisher and allow myself to relax at last; then I drink a toast to The Ganga Gompti Express.

Nice 'N' Sleazy

I'm woken with a start by the morning call to prayers from the mosque; it is 5am and still dark. Everytime the bus station announcer screams into the tannoy, the room lights flicker from the power overload. I call down for coffee, waking the sleeping houseboy. I pull myself together and put Trains At A Glance, my camera, and my notebook in my bag; I stop off at the restaurant and wolf down a spicy vegetable stuffed omelette and some more coffee, then take a cycle-rickshaw to Allahbad Junction. The booking centre is in a huge red building next to the main station, and I sit on the steps outside with a Wills Classic filling out a wad of reservation forms for all the possible connections to New Japaiguri - the railhead for the Darjeeling And Himalayan Railway. The booking hall is in turmoil: Allahbad's Sangam ( a sacred area alongside the Ganges ) is host to the Mela, and 100,000 pilgrims have arrived in the city on 450 special trains - half of them are trying to book their return tickets this morning. I notice one counter that has no queue, even though it's open for business; it is a dedicated credit card window, and as I approach, two Indians are turned away with their handfulls of Rupees. The train via Patna has a wait list of 403 people, the other route through Gaya 497. On the last possible train - The New Delhi-Guwahati North East Express - there is one second class two-tier berth left: I push my Visa card into the clerks hand and take my ticket. This is a Confirmed reservation - I definately have a place on the train; other possibilities are Reservation Against Cancellation and Wait Listed, which get you a seat or berth if one is available on the day, otherwise you travel in the crammed Unreserved coaches -which is something I fully intend to avoid at all costs.
I walk back to the station and watch a pair of WDMs waiting on platform 6 with a local passenger train I sit in the sun on a low railing with a mud cup of chai. I do not drink it. I have just watched it being brewed: milk poured into a filthy, dented metal pan, handfuls of tea-leaf dust and coarsely ground sugar tossed in afterward by the wallah’s dirty fingers, the whole lot warmed over a calor-gas ring. The lead one is orange and white, the paint faded and peeling, a garland draped around the headlight set high up in the front hood; the second one is red, white and blue, oil-stained and sooty. They are both lettered in Hindi, apart form their running numbers, their class – WDM 2a – and N.R. for Northern Railways. The elderly, bespectacled driver stands in the forward cab filling out his paperwork, more forms to add to the reams generated at every level of Indian railways, while his assistant climbs around the walkways outside the cab, cleaning the running lights with an oily rag. Without looking up from his reports, the driver leans forward and locks on the locomotive's air-horns. Startled by the blast, a goat trots off up the track in front of the engine, while a big green monkey jumps up onto the platform and struts past me with a sideways look. The assistant returns to the cab with a green flag and hangs it out of the door; the driver files his reports on a clipboard wedged into the driving stand, then pulls the power-handle back to notch 1. He sets about dusting-off the plastic armrest in his open window as the WDMs start to roll; he is casual and uninterested: he doesn’t bother to look ahead for obstructions on the line, or back down the train for to ensure all is in order. People surge past me to jump onto the moving train, and I notice a large brown rat scurrying along in the flow, somehow managing to avoid all the feet, even when it pauses to sniff something of interest. The driver pulls the power-handle even further back, still standing up in the cab, picking fluff from his jacket sleeve and the diesels slide the train out of the station and out of view in a cloud of black exhaust fumes. As I cross the footbridge over the station, I see a pall of smoke drifting over Allahbad: it’s not a fire, but the driver giving the WDMs full-throttle.
I go to The State Bank Of India to change a cheque. I am directed to the first floor Foreign Currency Cell, where I fill out two long and complex forms. I am called to the desk and wait while the Officer idly looks in his drawer, rearranges some papers, checks his PC screen and slowly drinks a cup of chai.
“Five minute wait”, he says to me, then strolls off without another word. He has done nothing about my transaction, not even looked at the forms. He is the worst sort of petty bureaucrat: he has the power to waste as much of my time as he wants, and make things as difficult as he wishes. And he knows it. I study the office: a concrete box with pale green walls and tattered orange curtains fluttering at the barred windows; grey metal desks with old PCs, brand new flat-screen monitors, their shipping boxes dumped in a corner. I hate the place.
After fifteen minutes I walk over to the Cell Supervisors desk and demand some action is taken. He takes over my case for a while, until the Bureaucrat returns and sits down to begin a conversation with his colleagues.
“Are you dealing with my case?” I ask him sharply, my patience exhausted.
“I am dealing with it”, he replies without conviction.
“Then do so. Now. Do you understand?”. This makes him jump.
Eventually I am issued with a form to take to the Chief Cashier at the end of the linoleum floored corridor - which he rejects immediately. I go back to the Cell and make the Bureaucrat correct his error. I walk back to the Cashier who then demands a token. The Cell issues me with the brass token number 6, which I throw at the Cashier. He reluctantly counts out my cash – all 50 Dollars of it. It has taken an hour.
I walk back to Civil Lines – the residential area of Raj administered Allahbad. I drink a milky coffee at the Aao Ji Dhaba, sitting in a brown plastic garden chair at a table facing the street. It is a local café in a cavernous, dark, open fronted room at the back of the old Palace Theatre. There are yellow serviettes and plastic flowers in little pots on the table, big cauldrons of curries and masalas simmering over gas-rings in the kitchen area at the back. A vegetable Thali is 35 Rupees, an Aloo Ghobi just 30, topped up constantly until you have eaten enough. An Indian boy balances on a rickety wooden stepladder and hangs strings of chillis and limes from the ceiling rafters. Everywhere I go I attract attention: four gentle-eyed pilgrims in orange robes and yellow headscarves squat on the street infront of my table, quietly watching me; the street traders outside and the other customers inside the Dhaba look away quickly whenever I glance up from my notebook. When I used the toilet at Allahbad Junction station this morning, a group of Indians gathered around the urinal to watch - commenting, correcting, agreeing with each other. There was no point in being embarrassed.
I walk to the Khana Shayam hotel and drink a beer in the 8th floor bar. On the way I pass another adaptation of the bicycle: a wallah, perfectly poised in the saddle, holds a knife to a spinning grinding wheel as he pedals; the chain has been disconnected from the rear wheel and attached to a sprocket driving the abrasive wheel. The doorman at the hotel is a tall Sikh with a bright red turban and a ceremonial dagger tucked into an orange sash; the waiters wear white dinner jackets, black bow-ties and yellow silk cummerbunds as they pour my drink. As the glass starts to become empty, a waiter will appear and quietly top it up for me. It is very nice, and the view of the sunset over Allahbad spectacular. A well dressed young English couple enters the bar. She is bossy and demanding, he silent and downtrodden. She complains in a loud plumy voice about the wine. Why haven’t you got red? Why is the white not chilled? How much is the champagne? What juices do you have? Which restaurant is the best in the hotel? On and on, constantly picking-up the helpful staff on their English, repeating back to them anything they say, poking at them with rhetorical, impatient questions. Her glum partner listens to her humiliate the waiters and doesn’t say a word. I hate these privileged people who come to India expecting a well stocked wine cellar waiting to be served at their preferred temperature; if you can’t make allowances for the difficult local conditions, then don’t come.
On the way back to the Tourist Bungalow I stop at a roadside bar counter called The Cold Beer Shop. It is a shack set-up on the mud alongside the street, and has a rope cordon around the litter strewn patch at the front. It is stocked with strong beer and bottles of Silky Stallion and White Mischief vodka. The owner takes a dusty bottle of Kingfisher from an old chest-freezer filled with ice, flips the cap out into the street and hands it to me; there is no nowhere to sit - I drink my beer standing up at the counter. Indian men scream up on scooters and Enfield Bullets and quickly drink the 100ml bottles of spirit standing at the counter before tearing off again. A couple of desperately alcoholic Indians stumble around, begging customers for drinks; one leans across the counter and wraps his trembling fingers around my Kingfisher bottle. I snatch it away, his watering eyes locked onto it. It reminds me of the booths I visited in Central Europe, the sordid drinking enclaves so popular with the less fortunate in life. Yet a booth in Allahbad? Dark hotel bars, yes: but a booth?
I take a cycle-rickshaw back to my room. The wallah has rigged up a line of bicycle bells on the front forks which ring whenever he pulls on a lever; a piece of string lifts a row of nails that bounce off the spinning spokes and strike the bells. It is very clever.
I order a room-service Aloo Dum and Naan, some mineral water, and wait for the call to evening prayers.

Slow Train To Allahbad

I wake at 4am and order coffee from room service; I spend the next ten minutes trying to check-out, and resort to constantly pointing at the clock in the lobby and reminding the manager that I must catch a train. I take a cycle-rickshaw to the station and take a photograph before going in; the building looks spectacular, lit up against the faint pink glow of the approaching sunrise. I find my train posted to depart from platform 10 and cross the network of footbridges to get to track-level. A train is in the platform but it is empty; I ask the train controller and he tells me to wait on platform 9, which an announcement over the tannoy confirms a few minutes later. The train from platform 10 pulls out and backs onto my platform; a small army of barefoot coolis load a mountain of cloth-wrapped packages and metal trunks into the two luggage cars, just as they had been doing on platform 10. Then the train suddenly moves off, disappearing into the darkness beyond the carriage sidings. I ask the controller what is going on, just as an announcement booms that the train will now leave from platform 3 instead. I see the red warning light at the back of the last carriage coming back into the station, way over on the other side. If I take the footbridges, I'll miss it: I jump down onto the track and pick my way across the tangle of lines. I walk past the massive bulk a WDM diesel on platform 4; as soon as I step infront of it the driver fires off an ear-splitting horn blast to signal departure, and I climb onto the platform just before it begins to move towards me. More parcels and bales are being loaded on platform 3: why make the coolis carry them between platforms when you can move the whole train instead? My name is posted at the door of the sole Chair Car; the rest of the 15 coach train is unreserved second class. There are no guaranteed seats in these carriages, it's just a free-for-all, and they are the ones you see with passengers hanging out of the doors and riding on the roofs.
We depart 40 minutes late after all the shunting around the station, and barely a mile later spend twenty minutes waiting for a local passenger train to clear the single track Northern Line. It passes behind a strange looking EMD built ( Electro Motive Division, part of the American General Motors Corporation ) diesel, known to Indian railwaymen as Jumbos, for a reason no-one can tell me. The WDM at the front locks the airhorns on, throws out a huge pall of black smoke, and I sit in the open doorway at 60mph, feet on the outside steps, the slipstream whipping away the smoke from my Wills Classic. The train bounces, bangs, rattles and sways; it jumps over level crossings, drops slightly on subsiding bridges, as unstable as an airliner in turbulence. I hear the tell-tale rustle of insufficient ballast shifting under the track as we hurtle along, the crunch and bash of worn out points. The track is as bad as the line from the Slovakian border to Krakow; the speed is more than double. I am sure the train will derail. The driver keeps the throttle wide open until we reach an old iron bridge over a small river. We creep by the mangled and twisted remains of a derailed freight train, the wagons upside down and on their sides, trailing down the embankment into the muddy water; axles and broken wheelsets are scattered everywhere, fractured and bent lengths of rail sticking up out of the lineside rice paddys and grass. The driver winds the WDM back up on the far side of the bridge and I tighten my grip on the railings outside my door. We cross a train of limestone bound for Bakaro Steel City at Harchandpur - I imagine it as an Indian equivalent of Ostrava: unvisited, industrialised, interesting - and I buy a mud cup of sickly sweet chai from a wallah on the platform. The station has a small, functional concrete building, the up and down lines separated by a wide, tree-lined mud strip where women squat in the dust and wait with timeless patience for the local passenger train; it is in the middle of nowhere, quiet, surrounded by fields and trees, it's customers people from the villages nearby. It is far from the bustle of Lucknow: the kind of place I would like to explore. After we leave Raebarelli the TTE ( Travelling Ticket Examiner ) checks my ticket. He has a handle-bar moustache and a tatty brown cardigan under his worn out uniform. He studies my ticket at length, checks it off on his reservation list, initials it and hands it back. He doesn't mention that I should be sitting in seat 43 and not number 12 with my luggage on 13 - so much for all the form-filling and rules and regulations.
We slow for a level crossing at a small town somewhere in the rural backwaters. The driver locks the locomotives horn, and creeps forward, waiting for the blue-uniformed crossing guard to hand-wind the barriers down across the road. A few pedestrians dash across in front of us as the guard holds up a green flag and the WDM bursts into life, the ALCO ( American Locomotive Company ) made 251 diesel engine churning out black smoke and deep-throated chugs. We rocket through a small station on the far side of the crossing, scattering chickens and goats that are poking around on the platform; as I lean out of the door, two sacks fly out of one of the luggage vans coupled behind the engine and thud onto the platform in a cloud of dust: the morning post has just arrived.
We cross the Ganges into the outskirts of Allahbad on a long, groaning iron bridge, the thick brown water far below, stretching to the horizon in either direction, the Ghats flocked with washing pilgrims. I pay one of the hundreds of cycle-rickshaw wallahs outside Allahbad Junction station 20 Rupees and tell him to "take me to the Tourist Bungalow only, and no shopping". Rickshaw wallahs can get commission from stall-holders and hotel owners for bringing foreign customers to their shops and flea-ridden guesthouses. I get the last single room at the state run Tourist Bungalow. It is small, fairly clean and has no hot water or glass in the windows; outside - beyond the fly-screens and bars, just over the wall of the Bungalow's compound is MG Marg bus stand; outside my door is a small garden fenced off from the veranda by monkey-mesh, another perimeter wall, then a mosque. The noise is incredible. I drink an ice-cold Kingfisher in the hotel bar, take a cold bucket-shower, then call down for some food and more beer. I eat my dinner to the sound of buses horns and revving engines and drink my beer while listening to the call to evening prayer. Every now and again these are drowned out by the screeching, over-amplified announcements from the bus stations tannoy. I call down twice more for Kingfisher before I fall into a fitful sleep; even through the numbing alcohol and a pair of earplugs, it sounds as if I'm sharing my room with half of Allahbad.

An Ambassador To The Residency

I wake to my alarm at 8am, collect the copy of The Times Of India that has been slid under the door, and call down for coffee. The 24-hour hot water is tepid, but I bucket-shower anyway, take my notebook and some cash, camera and map, and head off to Lucknow station. The booking centre is in a separate building and is a splendid piece of architecture, built along the same mosque-like lines as the huge main station. I fill out the booking form for my train to Allahbad and take it up to the counter; there is the usual jostling queue at each of the 20 windows, except one - the credit card payment counter. I walk up as two Indians are being turned away for trying to pay in Rupees, and slide my form under the disinterested clerk's nose. Within five minutes I have a confirmed ticket; I am amazed how stress free this booking was, and will make it policy to use my Visa whenever possible, as very few locals can afford this luxury. I walk back to the heaving carpark infront of the station and search for one of the few Ambassador taxis that hide amongst the cycle-rickshaws and oversize auto-rickshaws called Vikrams - six seat three-wheelers that operate fixed routes on which up to eight passengers share for a small fare. The street vendors sell everything a prospective rail traveller might need for their journey: shoeshines, padlocks, luggage repairs, food, ear cleans and "erotic" magazines - printed on rough, thin paper, the Hindi text smudged with no pictures other than the one on the cover showing a demur looking young lady with almost all of her clothes on. I find a big, white Ambassador with leather-sheathed chrome uprights on the wings and a chrome-trimmed visor extending out over the top of the windscreen; the windows are deeply tinted and have neatly tied net curtains for even further privacy. These cars have been produced by Hindustan Motors in West Bengal since the 1940s, and although improved over the years, are basically the same British Morris Oxford that they were modelled on. They epitomize motoring in India, even if they are primitive: weighing in at over a ton, with a 1500cc diesel engine that struggles to produce a paltry 37 horsepower ( about half that of a basic Ford Fiesta ), they're not particularly fast, and all four wheels use old-fashioned drum-brakes. I ask the driver to take me to The Residency, and we set off at a leisurely pace through the crazy traffic; I slide across the smooth leather back seat when we swerve to avoid suicidal rickshaw wallahs and Leyland bus drivers. The drive is a delightful experience, the car a fascinating piece of living history, eccentric and lovable. I pay the driver off after the journey - I will take a cheaper rickshaw back.
The Residency of Lucknow was besieged in 1857 after the British takeover of Avadh, and is preserved in the condition it was in after months of desperate fighting and sustained canon-fire. The red-brick walls are pocked and scarred, the tower half-destroyed but still standing. Over 2000 people - loyal Indians, women, children and British soldiers - died before the siege was lifted, many from cholera and gangrenous wounds in the appalling conditions. I walk around the well kept grounds, chipmunks scurrying along the path infront of me, parrots startled from the tall palms flying overhead. As with everywhere in Lucknow, there are very few women to be seen, and any I do see avert their eyes quickly; I'm used to the attention of the locals by now, but for an Indian woman to look at a foreign man would be unthinkable, perhaps punishable, although I'm sure they are as curious about me as the men are.
I take a cycle-rickshaw back to Charbagh. The wallah has a neat grey beard, a white skull cap, cooli shirt and pants, thick wool socks under sandals, and one dark brown tooth at the corner of his mouth. His rickshaw is brand new - black framed with big chrome mudgaurds, a red plastic passenger bench, the hood decorated with gold muslim embroidery; it is a Nirmgl DX model, made in steel by Khalsa Products, and he is very proud when I compliment him on his machine. We ride slowly through the bazaar, one of the streets lined with gun shops - like the Azad Gun House - the dull black gleam of the weapons seen behind flimsy glass fronted cabinets in open doorways. There are shops selling barbed wire, plastic pipes, and Butan Tuff 5-Ply Vimal Socks; Alico Furnishers claims to be "A place Of Latest Wooden And Steel Furniture", while the Imperial Cycle Co offers Atlas, Hermes and BSA bicycles. The wallah calls out "Hallo! Hallo!" whenever anyone gets too close to us - the cycle-rickshaw's horn. Past The Sadar Bearing House and Kanpur Delhi Goods Carriers, then I gently shake the wallah's shoulder and point to a bookstall set up under the shade of a corrugated iron lean-to. My eye was caught by a cheap counterfeit copy of the official railway timetable - trains at a glance - and the colour photograph on the cover. It is a badly printed, error ridden copy of my genuine publication, and the editor has unwisely selected a picture of an American EMD F-Unit diesel instead of an Indian train of any description; the classic, 1940's locomotive carries a yellow livery and is lettered for the Royal Gorge route, a preserved tourist train running on the old Rio Grande route from Georgetown in Colorado. Why on earth did they use this picture, and how did they find it?
I direct the wallah to drop me at the Chief Guest bar not far from the Deep Avadh hotel; it is the usual dimly lit and curtained drinking hole, a handful of Indian men drinking Haywards 5000 - the strongest beer on the drinks menu - at the tables. They have run out of Kingfisher, so I order a McDowells rum with a Deep's Fire ( Light Up The Fire Within ) soda mixer. It is 42 percent proof and tastes like methanol; it catches my breath and makes my eyes water even when diluted with all of the Deep's Fire. I ask the waiter for Will Classics, but he only has cheap Gold Flake Navy Cut; I buy two single cigarettes and he gives me a matchbox too: in India it is matchbox, not a box of matches. An Indian man walks into the bar with a massive double-barrel shoutgun slung over his shoulder, orders a neat White Mischief vodka, downs it in one and leaves. I leave the bar and the half-finished drink and walk out into the gathering dusk; I am as drunk after two large sips of the raw alcohol as I was after the unknown drink in the awful Bus Pub in Hungary: will I ever learn?
I drink a cold Kingfisher in the dingy bar to get the taste of the McDowells out of my mouth; the walk back to my hotel in the dark enough to sober even the most intoxicated traveller. I order a vegetable biryani to eat in my room and have an early night; as I lie in bed I can still feel the bump-bump-bump of the rickshaw ride: in spite of being new, one of the wheels was already buckled.

Into The Northern State

I wake a few minutes before my 4am alarm, wash and dress at the same time, then order a coffee from room service. It arrives twenty minutes later;I drink the hot sweet liquid while the manager conducts a pre-checkout inspection of the dilapidated room. A small cockroach scales the bedroom wall as the manager cranes his head into the filthy toilet cubicle. I pick my way down the darkened Bazar to New Delhi station in the pre-dawn chill of a dry Himalayan wind.
My train is waiting on platefrom 12 and I check the list posted next to coach 13's door; I am the only western reserved, my Irish name an interloper among the Sonals and Singhs, alien and undoubtedly unpronounceable to my fellow passengers. I buy an "espresso" from a wallah - the polar opposite of Hungarian espresso: sweet, milky, thick - and smoke a Wills on the plateform while I wait for departure time, checking the canopy above me for monkeys, whose specialty is aerial defecation from their perches in the rafters. A station announcement:
"For your kind attention: firearms and explosives are not allowed to travel on the train. This includes kerosene, petrol and cooking gas". Followed by: "Spitting on the platform is unhygienic; containers for this purpose are placed around the station".
The train is wide and spacious - thanks to the Imerial Broad gauge - with comfortable reclining seats in rows of five, complete with fold-down airline style tables; there are 24 coaches with a WAP electric locomotive at the head, which sounds a long blast of it's horn just before we pull out at 6.10am with a violent jolt of the couplings. It is pitch dark as the train crawls through the Delhi suburbs, the glow of cooking fires with shadows moving around them the only thing outside my window. Once into the countryside, the WAP picks up speed and dawn begins to tinge the horizon a misty pink. An announcement informs passengers that "The toilet doors must be locked before starting their usage", going on to give detailed instructions in Hindi and English on how this is successfully achieved. Breakfast is served to my table as the sun rises, washing the landscape with a velvety light: two vegetable cutlets, some chiplets, a couple of slices of sweet-tasting white bread and jam. The train rolls across the table-top flat Gangetic Plain at a constant speed of around 70mph; the line is completely straight and there are no gradients to negotiate, just the occasional junction or signal check to slow for. I watch dun-coloured mud-and-thatch villages pass the window; the geometric shapes of bamboo stands; rice paddies with low mist rising from them, as if simmering; grand Havelis, their pastel washed walls glowing against the emerald background of the land. I stand in the end vestibule and smoke a Wills Classic. Sometimes a narrow road will hug the line for a while, but there is no traffic and it soon disappears to leave the train alone in this huge open space. Indian music is broadcast over the tannoy for a few minutes before each stop to alert passengers that we are coming to a station, then an announcement is made. After a two minute pause at Kanpur, we slowly cross the Ganges on a long trestle bridge. After 7 hours I finally reach Lucknow; the music starts and the Hindi/English announcement gives details of the city, and it's cultural highlights - in this case Mughali cuisine and mosques, but no mention of the once besieged residency.
I walk out of Lucknow station and am immediately surrounded by a crowd of rickshaw wallahs, each frantically shouting, tugging at my clothes, desperate for my business; a gaggle of coolis wearing brown dhotis stand off to one side and watch me hopefully: they are employed by the railway and expressly forbidden from approaching me and asking whether they could carry my luggage - on their heads - to a destination of my choice for a small pittance. I negotiate a cycle-rickshaw fare with some difficulty, the standard and incidence of spoken English far lower here than in Delhi, and check into the Deep Avadh hotel. I produce my passport, leave a deposit and fill out a series of forms. I deposit my money in their safe - an enormously complex procedure involving the cashier, manager and head receptionist, who insist I count it all infront of them. The staff, from cleaners to doormen watch all of this in stunned silence, and I feel awful being forced to show what must be a vast sum of money to these people. The porter carries my bag to my room and enquires whether "Sir would like tea or coffee?"; he returns with a flask and places it next to The Times Of India on the table. I give him a generous tip and he smiles with rotten teeth and bows his head, backing out of the room, thanking me over and again.
The phone rings: reception requesting: "To please return to lobby bringing passport"; it seems I have omitted a signature from one of the forms, which can only be remedied on sight of my passport, just in case I have changed my identity since it was last seen a few minutes ago.
I take a rickshaw to Asaf-ud-Daula's mosque mid-afternoon and return form the 4km trip at 6.30pm after a jarring, painfully slow crawl through the city. I am filthy, my hair scrubbing-brush thick with dust, tired and thirsty. I buy a Kingfisher in the bar, dimly lit and hidden from view in the hotel's basement, decorated with kitsch paintings and furnished with cheap plastic club chairs; drinking is a guilty and secretive affair in many Indian states, and conducted behind closed doors and curtained windows in Uddar Pradesh. I order an Aloo Zeera and some paratha back in my room, scrubbing off the day's grime in the Indian style bucket-shower while I wait for it to arrive. Tomorrow I will go to the station with my timetable and spend whatever time necessary to book my onward ticket; then I will explore Lucknow properly.

Delhi, New and Old

I walk to a little Dhaba for breakfast of sweet milky coffe and omelette with paratha; there are a few other western travellers and a lot of locals eating at the fomica tables that are open to the street. A constant stream of rickshaws and scooters pass by, then two turbaned men swathed in bright cloth on elephants. I take a cycle-rickshaw to Connaught Place. The wallah in called Surav, and although only 20, he looks forty years old. As we pass chronically overloaded ox-carts and cripples begging in rags, I watch as three well-dressed Indian men scream at their scared cooli because he cannot carry all of their heavy boxes on his head. Surav isn't married and doesn't know if any of his family back in Bihar are still alive; he lives in a shack in Arem Bagh, and he would one day like to become a car driver. As we turn onto one of the radial roads toward Connaught Place I see a roadside stall piled with pyramids of exquisitely coloured spices; behind it, wretched hovels surrounded by pools of human waste, diseased and malnourished children covered in open sores and excrement.
I take one of the shared jeeps to the Red Fort in Old Delhi. While I sit on a wall and smoke a Wills Classic, three young Indian men walk over and shyly ask if they could be photographed with me; they thank me and keep turning to smile and wave as they cross the carpark. I walk down to Old Delhi station, stopping here and there to take photographs of my own; various people say "Hello, Sir" as I pass, and almost everyone looks at me curiously - they are fascinated by my appearance, but I don't feel in the least bit threatened. I have seen no other westerners since leaving the Red Fort. I take an enormous risk sneaking pictures at the station. Photography is strictly forbidden unless you go through the lengthy process of obtaining a permit, and I would probably be arrested if caught, or at the very least heavily fined. When my nerve fails me, I walk through the bazar towards fort and become completely lost in the packed, bustling alleys. After an hour of dead-ends and wrong turns I hail a cycle-rickshaw; I realise I have walked probably a mile in the wrong direction, and it takes the wallah a hard half-hour pedal to drop me back in to the jeep stand.
I have my boots cleaned in Connaught Place by Amerchand who has been doing this since leaving Madhai Pardesh when he was 10.
I drink an expensive Kingfisher Premium in the Standard Coffee House. The tablecloths are linen, the waiters discreet and impeccably dressed; cut glass chandeliers hang from the huge ceiling and the high paneled walls are decorated with enormous paintings and mirrors. The place oozes Raj era elegance and opulence, but loud modern music shatters any illusion that those days are anything other than firmly in the past. I take an auto-rickshaw back to my room in Pahar Ganj, studying the incredible variety of movement screaming,walking, trotting or crawling around the city. Cycle-rickshaws in passenger, cargo, chai dispensing, mobile food-stall and travelling telephone box versions, the latter with two or three mis-matched old domestic phones precariously wired up to the innards of a cell-phone. Auto-rickshaws can be cargo or passenger, while bicycles provide a platform for smaller food-outlets and the carriage of gas canisters and jerrycans of kerosene and petrol. The iconic Ambassador cars are garishly or gracefully embellished according to the drivers taste and market, and sometimes have the same attention lavished on them as Czech Railways 754 diesels merit - net curtains, interior grooming mirrors, homemade sun-visors. Battered Suzuki mini-van taxis made under licence in India by Maruti; beaten-up Leyland buses with crumpled and fading panels, intricately decorated Tata trucks in bright primary colours. Ox-carts piled high with cotton bales and sheets of wood; donkeys with panniers of bricks. Elephants, jeeps, scooters, Enfield Bullets - another icon. Cows, goats, monkeys and pedestrians. It is both alien and fascinating; I am exhausted when I reach my hotel.
I eat at the Metropolis Hotel and chat to two young American travellers over a bottle of Kingfisher; a drunk, middle-aged Australian man staggers to our table and begins to shout at us, something about knowing what happened in Vietnam; we ignore him and watch as he crashes through the door and out into the darkness of the bazar.
I set my alarm and go to bed listening to the endless tooting of traffic horns; I hear the long pre-departure blast of a locomotive from nearby New Delhi station, which is where early tomorrow morning I will catch my first train.

Indian Imperial Broad

I am walking along the Main Bazar in Pahar Ganj towards New Delhi railway station when I feel a thump on my right shoulder; the blow propels me into a pile of brightly coloured woven blankets heaped on the dusty roadside by one of the hundreds of street traders. It is my first day in Delhi, and I have just been run over for the first time by a cycle-rickshaw. More embarrassed than injured, I dust myself off and rejoin the mass of people, cars, cows, scooters, and rickshaws squeezed into the narrow dusty street between the ramshackle buildings and the street vendors. The blaring horns, noise, smells, fumes and dust are awe inspiring; the random and conflicting trajectories of pedestrians, cattle, and traffic is bewildering.
Since leaving Hungary in early November I have stayed with my sister in a quintessential Cotswold village on the Thames, where seeing the postman peddling his bright red bicycle around the lanes is something of note. The teashop at Kelmscott, Blackwell's in Oxford, and discovering the simple pleasure of gardening have been welcome respite from week upon week of railway journeys in central Europe; but they have not prepared me in the least for three months in India. Could anything?
Nairobi is quiet and conservative when compared to Delhi - calm, peaceful, ordered; Capetown and Harare quaint, relaxed, uncrowded.
I dodge through the heaving traffic at the junction opposite the station, skimming off auto-rickshaws, missing buses and bicycles by fractions of an inch, stumbling in potholes and breathing blue diesel fumes and dust. I buy a 3 Rupee platform ticket and a timetable that is as thick as a coffee-table book: it contains every major train in India, from Amritsar in the far north of Punjab on the Pakistan border to Rameshwaram at the bottom of Tamil Nadu a few kilometers across the Gulf of Mannar from Sri Lanka. It would take a year to explore it all, but for the next three months this book will be the blueprint for my railway travels around the subcontinent.
I sit on a bale of cotton at the end of plateform (not "platform") 16, surrounded by hundreds of boxes, parcels, and other bales of cloth - and some very inquisitive locals - and watch a huge WDM diesel waiting to leave with a twenty-plus carriage passenger train. Indian railways come in different sizes; there are narrow gauge lines in the hill states, and broad and meter gauge lines elsewhere. There is a whole litany between the width of two rails: Bosnian Gauge for 2ft 5 and 7/8in; Supreme Metric Narrow is 1000mm wide, while Suez Walhalla Whitfield (people? places?) sit 2ft 6in apart. My favorite is Decauville Portable Narrow: not because the rails are exactly 1ft 11 and 5/8in distant, but for the mental picture of someone picking them up and walking away with them. The WDM diesel runs on 5ft 6in Imperial Broad gauge - the standard for Indian mainlines - and as I circle in my timetable train number 2004 departing New Delhi at 6.15 in the morning for Lucknow, the driver sounds a long blast of the airhorns to signal departure, drowning out all other noise and leaving my ears ringing and feeling strangely pressurised. My train will be a Shatabdi Express - fast, air-conditioned, expensive at 700 Rupees - and will take nearly 8 hours to reach Lucknow. It will be a far cry from the wooden slatted seats and barred windows of the passenger train. He lowers and waves a green flag from the cab window and moves the throttle to notch 1 as people dash across the plateform and tracks and climb onto the train, clinging in the open doorways, faces crammed against the barred windows, imprisoned in the dark, packed coaches. The WDM opens up with a growl and slides the train out of the station, the airhorns blaring every few seconds, a dictat of the bureaucratic railway rules: too few warning blasts would be noted and the driver disciplined.
I go to the foreigners Booking Office on the first floor above the Public Grievances Cell and The superintendent Of Parcel Bookings office and fill out a booking/cancellation of booking form for my train. I sit on a battered brown vinyl settee and wait to be called to the agents desk. My passport and visa details are entered into an MS-DOS era computer, along with my name, age, sex, and address, and once I have produced an Encashment Certificate I exchange a wad of Rupees for my ticket.
I leave the station and take an auto-rickshaw to Connaught Place; the driver carves his way through the anarchic traffic using his tinny sounding horn and occasionally the brakes, and I am stunned into silence by the frightening near misses and last minute swerves to avoid head-on collisions. I find a small restaurant behind the colonnaded circle and eat some dal and bread, then walk to a bar for a Kingfisher beer - dutch courage for the rickshaw ride back to my small, unclean, budget hotel.