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.