The Road To Madikeri

The waiter appears with a glass of black coffee as soon as I take a table in the courtyard restaurant; the first hint of dawn is tinging the sky to the east, the crows and kites starting their morning reveille. At 7 o'clock I leave a 10 Rupee note under my empty glass, collect my bag, and leave the key to room 104 at the front desk. I walk down an almost deserted Dhanavanthri Road until I find a rickshaw pulled up on the dusty verge, the wallah waking himself up with a cup of chai from the little wooden road-side shack that never seems to close; his hair is tousled and his shirt crumpled, and it takes him a few moments to register his first fare of the day. It is common for drivers to live in their rickshaws, and many only go home to their villages and families for a day or two when earnings permit the luxury; they live a harsh, unforgiving life, renting their vehicles by the week with no guarantee of covering even that modest cost. Before we reach Mysore's City Bus Stand, the wallah coasts into a garage and asks apologetically if I would pay my fare now so that he can afford some fuel. He buys 20 Rupees worth of petrol and puts the other ten in his back pocket. It will go towards the costs of rickshaw hire, and sustaining himself; and, if it is a good day, there will be a few coins left over to take home to his family.
An Indian city's bus stand is at the tumultuous heart of its already chaotic transport system; at any hour of the day, it is a thriving, animated circus of noise, light, and movement. Where Mysore Junction railway station follows the pattern of logic laid down by timetables, platforms, and bilingual loudspeaker announcements, the City Bus Stand works under the premises of guesswork, intuition, and some sort of unspoken collective understanding. I ask a brown-uniformed official, who carries a clipboard and seems to be some sort of controller or despatcher, where the bus to Madikeri will leave from; he gestures in the vague direction of the parking bays at the back of the building, where a long line of battered coaches with homemade destination signs in Hindi and Kanadian stand. At the front of each bus there are more uniformed people, and crowds of passengers urgently negotiating prices and arguing over luggage fees, buying tickets and passing bags and suitcases through bus windows to unseen friends and relatives inside.
Like Indian Railways, the state operated buses have different classes. Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) offers the choice of Ordinary, Semi-Deluxe, Super-Deluxe and Ultra-Deluxe travel; increasing in increments of less discomfort, more cost, and fewer and shorter stops, they run everywhere but to the smallest towns and villages. I find a Ultra-Deluxe from Bangalore that is making the run to Mangalore over the Western Ghats via Madikeri and pay the conductor 105 Rupees for a reserved seat - twice the price of a train journey of comparable distance, had a line serving the Coorg region of Karnataka ever been built. The bus is a dented Ashoka Leyland with blacked-out windows, balding tyres and frayed reclining seats; there is no luggage hold, and my bag is too big to fit in the overhead rack; I wedge it between the back of the drivers seat and the transmission housing, chaining it to a handrail for security. I buy water and some cashews for breakfast, smoke a Wills Classic, and push my way down the aisle of the already crowded bus to my seat. The driver sounds his horn as we pull slowly out of the bus station, provoking a stampede of last minute passengers who shoehorn themselves into every inch of standing space left; the conductor turns on a large television at the front of the bus, inserts a video in the player and adjusts the volume to an ear-splitting, distorted scream. The Ultra-Deluxe is what is known as a Videobus service - one of India's most disagreeable ways to travel - but it is too late to change now that we are on the main Eliwala Road. The man sitting next to me unpacks the breakfast of iddli and copra chutney he has bought from the bhavan in the bus stand, sprawls himself out in and stares fixedly at the screen as an attractive Indian actress launches into a screeching love song against the backdrop of a misty Punjabi plain. I slide my window open and watch the streets of Mysore slip by, trying to ignore the deafening music and crowding limbs of my travelling companion.
I have never understood having entertainment on transport other than, perhaps, aircraft. There is little to see at 39000 feet at night on a long flight, but in daylight, I would much rather look out of the window and cross reference what I am seeing with the interactive map on the seat-back screen. But on land - whether in a car, a train, or a bus - there is always something interesting, exciting, bizarre or occasionally shocking to see - day and night. Why watch a film on a Videobus or a car's seat-back DVD player when the world is outside your window? Are we that indifferent to what is happening around us, whether it is the brightly dressed women working in the paddy fields of Tamil Nadu, or the old man walking his dog through a housing estate in Milton Keynes? It takes the best part of fifty minutes and a lot of stops for even more passengers to pile aboard before we are on the open road with Mysore behind us. The road varies from brand new dual carriageway - where once, we are overtaken by another bus driving head-on into the oncoming traffic on the other side of the central barrier - to little more than a beaten earth track through dusty farmland; the driver bullies rickshaws and scooters out of the way with his horn, and keeps the bus a scant couple of feet from the bumper of the vehicle in front. I have no choice but to slide my window shut against the choking dust thrown up from the road, and endure the airless, sweat-scented atmosphere inside and din of the television with gritted teeth.
At 11 o'clock we swing into the bus stand at Bylakuppa for a ten minute break; I fight my way to the door and stand on the forecourt with a Wills Classic and my map. I estimate we are less than 50 kilometres from Madikeri - which is borne out by the blue outline of the Coorg hills on the horizon - a journey of perhaps an hour and a half at most. I buy a cup of chai, more water, and get back on the bus. The handful of passengers who got off at Bylakuppa have been replaced with twice as many more, and it takes me several minutes to convince the occupant of my reserved seat that under no circumstances is he staying in it. There is no deference to age, gender, or infirmity on Indian buses - unlike travelling on Indian Railways; pregnant women and tired old men will stand for a journey of hours while younger and fitter passengers doze contentedly in the reclining seats. To offer my place to the exhausted old lady with her bags of market vegetables would be a breach of social etiquette, and could be misinterpreted in any number of ways. There is a momentary respite from the pummelling noise from the television while the tape is changed; the next film is what appears to be an action/comedy/romance/musical filmed in the 1970s, with creaking, garishly painted sets, awful contemporary costumes, and lengthy and entirely unconvincing set-piece martial arts fights. If anything, it is even louder than before.
After an hour I begin to doubt my estimate of being in Madikeri before one o'clock; the road rises steadily through the lower hills, then begins a twisting ascent into the mountainous coffee growing region of Coorg. The hairpin bends are so tight, the climbs so steep, that the bus grinds uphill at less than walking pace in first gear. The scenery, though, is idyllic: coffee bushes and pepper vines growing under the shade of sandalwood and palm trees; thick forest jungle and blossoming jacaranda; tiny villages and plantations with names like Fairlands and Hillyside Estates hidden behind white painted picket fences; rivers and mountain streams sparkling in the sun, unpolluted and undisturbed. When I open my window, the air is fresh and warm, free of the heat and fumes of Mysore which seemed at the time a relief after Chennai. We stop at Kushal Nagar just after one o'clock; a sign outside the bus stand tells me it is still 30 kilometres to Madikeri. The road becomes ever steeper, the forest thicker and lusher, as we toil up the last stretch to the outskirts of Madikeri and drive the short distance to the bus stand - just as the end credits of the terrible film roll down the screen, as if they had been timed to the very second. I retrieve my bag from behind the driver's seat, dust off the prints where it has been used as a footrest, thank the conductor, and step down into the refreshing air of Madikeri - or Mercara as it is known in Kanadian, the Karnatakan language - capital of Coorg (Kodagu), an area proudly described as The Scotland Of India by those who live here.
The bus stand is at the bottom of a hill behind the main Chouk. I follow a narrow lane between the backs of some ugly concrete office blocks and climb a steep flight of stone steps up to Mahadev Pet and the rickshaw stand opposite the Canara Bank. The entire town centre would fit inside the confines of Mysore's Devajara Market; there are two or three hotels - each with a bar and restaurant - a handful 'Meals Ready' halls, a couple of dozen 'General Sales' and beedi-and-paan stores, and the odd 'Coorg Honey-Coffee-Cardamom' shop serving the few tourists who pass through. A small traffic circle in front of the public bus stand, where old and decrepit coaches wait to ferry villagers out into the nearby countryside and backwaters not served by KSRTC, is presided over by a policeman in a crisp uniform, complete with white gloves and bush hat. There isn't very much traffic for him to direct, apart from the endless stream of buses that grind up and down the hilly main road. I ask a rickshaw driver to take me to the Hotel Valley View - part of the same government run chain as the Mayura Hoysala - but dismiss any thoughts of staying there as soon as we reach the main gate. The ramshackle colonial building that was the original accommodation has been elbowed out of the way by a new, starkly modern, characterless block, which sits in the middle of a waste ground of builders debris. The car park is a field of rubble, and a apart from a bicycle leaning against the hotel wall, it is completely empty. The tariff board facing the road asks for 1000 Rupees a night, and I doubt many people get any further than this before turning around. The silhouettes of five or six staff gather behind the smoked glass lobby doors and then drift away in disappointment as my rickshaw u-turns back onto Race Course Road. I find the Rajhandi Hotel a hundred metres below Raja's Seat - once the site of the Maharajas' belvedere overlooking the valley below - and check into a room with a view of the garden and the two resident ducks that waddle around the lawn and paddle in the small pond.
The Rajhandi is built into a hillside on the edge of town, its four floors descending from Raja's Seat Road to the car park entrance on a narrow lane called Gowhli Street. I sit at my window table with a room service bottle of Kingfisher and look out over the town. Ringed by low green hills, the brightly painted bungalows with their red terracotta roof tiles stand shoulder to shoulder with the minarets and domes of the rajas' tombs, surrounded by tall trees and colourful splashes of bougainvillea; it is so quiet that I can hear only distant birdsong and the whisper of a faint breeze in the palms along the lane.
I walk down Gowhli Street into town and eat a simple meal of stewed pumpkin and rice in the Capitol Bar And Restaurant. I am their only western customer; the houseboys serve me with something akin to reverence for a rare European visitor, and the manager makes a point of coming to my table to welcome me. I tell him, in all honesty, that his food is excellent, and leave a generous tip for their obliging service. On my way back to the Rajhandi I notice a sign for 'Motorbike On Hire' with an arrow pointing to a rickety staircase and a first floor office lettered Nisarga Tourism. Half an hour later I sit in the hotel bar with a Kingfisher and plan a route for tomorrow using the hand-drawn maps that came with the Yamaha Gladiator. A web of minor roads radiates out from Madikei and connects countless tiny settlement and plantation estates with the capital; and more destinations lie off the main Mysore Road that my bus crawled up today. But for my first trip, I decide on a short orienteering ride to Abbi Falls and back - just to make sure that both the bike, and myself, can negotiate Coorg's roads.

Big City, Quiet Suburb

I wake in the warm darkness at six o'clock in the morning, bucket shower to the sound of the kites in the trees outside rousing themselves for the day's scavenging and go down to the courtyard restaurant. After five minutes of searching I finally find the waiter: "Black coffee, Sir?" he asks, bringing a steaming glass to my table along with a Haywards 5000 ashtray. The restaurant is empty, the rest of the hotel dark and silent; it is a Saturday, and nobody is in a hurry to anywhere at this hour. I leave my key behind the deserted front desk and walk down Dhanavanthri Road to the kiosk that sells paan, 10 Paise candies, Hindi newspapers and Wills Classics; it is closed, as is everything else around it. I turn back and make for the station, scanning the raised section of footpath that borders the approach road for dark squares where some of the thick, stone slabs are missing - a three foot drop into the sewer flowing below, perhaps a broken leg on the way down. I buy an unreserved ticket for Bangalore on the 6.45 Chamundi Express and find a street hawker selling packs of Wills Navy Cut beneath a plane tree outside the station gates. I stand in the shadows beside a chai stall and smoke, politely refusing the offers of rickshaws into town, explaining that I am waiting for the train, pointing out to the shoeshine wallahs that my boots are already very clean and declining to buy enormous packets of cashews and groundnuts for journey. A man leading a thin, saddled and lame pony pauses in front of me: "You like ride in town?". The Chamundi Express is waiting at platform one behind a WDM-2 and the bustle of activity in the station is a complete contrast to the slumbering town beyond its perimeter lights. Bales of cloth and mounds of cases are being loaded into the Luggage-Cum-Brake Van, hawkers and chai wallahs hover around the carriage doors serving passengers who dart out from their dim interiors and rush back before their seats are lost; a large crowd jostles to refill empty plastic bottles at the drinking water fountain, while those who have already secured a seat on the train stand on the platform smoking, chatting, drinking chai and glancing at their watches.
I sit on a lower corridor side bunk in a Sleeper Class coach; there is thin foam padding beneath the blue vinyl cover, and it is almost as uncomfortable as the bare wooden seats in Second Class. As the WDM sounds its air horns for departure, a woman who's face is so worn and lined that she could be any age between 30 and 50 pushes through the crowded carriage and sits on the bunk opposite mine; one of her sons is perhaps ten years old and wears a dirty pullover and ragged underpants, the other is older and carries himself on his hands and the points of his knees, his withered legs scissored behind him, crabbing along the filthy carriage floor. The crab-boy climbs into the upper bunk above his mother with surprising agility, perfectly adapted to his condition, and hangs with his head upside down to torment his brother with a drooling leer. The train starts with a lurch, stops again suddenly and then a few moments later gets underway for real. We stop at every halt and station along the line to Bangalore, sometimes for little more than a minute, other times long enough to step down onto the platform to buy a cup of chai or coffee and smoke a Wills Classic.
Travelling on an ordinary Indian passenger train is unlike any railway journey I could take in Europe. In Britain, railways are a strictly commercial, for-profit operation and as such preclude any notions of social responsibility in providing a service for ordinary people: they are for business people and well-heeled leisure travellers, students with discount cards and pensioners with concessions; for almost everyone else they prohibitively expensive. This exclusion becomes less marked as you cross mainland Europe and almost vanishes when you cross the German border into the Czech Republic. Throughout central Europe fares are considerably lower than the west and are the same whether a ticket is bought two months in advance or two minutes before departure; trains are recognised as a social necessity - incomes are lower and car ownership less - an essential link for a large proportion of the population. But in India, the railways are the backbone of the country's transport system and an indispensable part of life for millions of people. The railways have a life of their own: their own political and social structures, annual budgets in hundreds of millions of Rupees, their own police force, officers clubs and welfare associations, more than a million employees and thirteen million passengers every day. For every Shatabdi Express charging 300 Rupees to Bangalore there is at least one ordinary passenger train charging 25 Rupees; on the Howrah-Chennai Mail you can travel the 1663 kilometres in First Class Air-Conditioned at 2935 Rupees or pay 140 Rupees in Second Class. Nobody is excluded, regardless of income; each social tier is accommodated, and the train made up to reflect demand - just 10 First Class Sleeper berths in an entire 24 coach train, the majority of the the rest the least expensive Second Class and ordinary Sleeper Class. Even with increasing car ownership the mathematics make sense: 1663 kilometres, 70 kilometres per litre of fuel costing 50 Rupees per litre equals 1187 Rupees - a comfortable berth in a Three Tier Air-Conditioned coach would cost less. To put that into perspective, if I bought a single standard class ticket from Swindon to London Paddington tomorrow - which is less than 100 miles - it would cost me more than a first class sleeper journey of 5000 kilometres on Indian Railways. And if I chose to spend my money on an Unreserved Second Class ticket, it would buy me 76,000 kilometres of travel. The Times Of India and the Vijay Times often refer to ordinary trains as "Peoples Trains" or "Trains For The Poor" - this is not derogatory in any way, but simply an understanding of the social role played by Indian Railways. And the most surprising thing about India's Peoples Railway? An estimated profit of 2.5 billion US Dollars last year, as reported in the Washington Post.
I arrive at Bangalore City station a little after 10 o'clock. Nobody seems to use the footbridge over to platform one and the exit, the disembarking passengers choosing to walk across the tracks instead. It's a risky affair: there are five running lines and numerous power operated points to navigate. I cross in front of the WDM at the head of my train and immediately jump back as a red and white WAP-4 electric blasts its horns at me as it passes on the adjacent line. I watch as the points snap over with a thunk! and it reverses back onto its train in platform three. I pick my way over to the exit, pausing again for a pair of WDMs to rumble through the station and find a rickshaw to take me to MG Road. The driver demands 150 Rupees, which I negotiate down to 70, and we set off into the choking fumes and gridlocked streets of the city. As with Mysore, there are no cycle-rickshaws in Bangalore; the roads are too crowded and too dangerous, the distances and the hills too great. Where Mysore has herds of cows and horses wandering the streets and lanes, Bangalore has hordes of cars and scooters, rickshaws and Ashoka Leyland buses, along with the notorious packs of stray dogs; the pollution is staggering and the noise overwhelming. For all its affluence, it is an unattractive city. It takes almost forty minutes to travel the seven kilometres to MG Road, most of which is spent in traffic jams breathing in the fumes from a thousand exhaust pipes. I find the Thomas Cook office tucked away in a modern shopping mall and change a cheque; the cashier only has 100 and 500 Rupee notes and I walk back to the street with an inch thick wad of notes crammed into my security wallet, bulging noticeably behind the pocket of my jeans. I find the Indian Coffee House and order a drink and a very pukka cucumber sandwich.
"Do you mind if I join you?" an elderly Indian man in smart casual clothes asks in perfect and un-accented English.
He introduces himself as Jesse, retired naval officer turned freelance journalist and part-time author, and is delighted when he notices a Le Carre novel that I picked up at Higginbotham's on the way to the coffee shop. We chat about books, reading, writing, politics and some of the absurdities of Indian life. He warns me about the eunuchs who frequent MG Road, and their unorthodox means of begging: dressed as women, if their initial request for money is refused, they will simply raise their sarees or dresses and follow you until you pay up. While visitors may be shamed and embarrassed into submission, the locals aren't quite as sensitive, as the Vijay Times reports: three eunuchs - Rupa, Prema and Mary - were attacked for harassing people in Kanakapura Road. While Mary made her, or it's escape, Prema and Rupa were both hospitalised. But it's not all bad news for Bangalore's eunuchs: some unscrupulous banks are employing them to visit defaulters homes to recover outstanding monies - a tactic that is proving very successful......
I take a rickshaw back to city station and just make the Bangalore-Mysore Tippu Express. I stand in the open doorway with a Wills Classic as we crawl through the suburbs; this is the view of Bangalore the city doesn't promote. Squalid shacks and tented slums; stinking, polluted streams choked with litter and plastic bags; barefoot rag-pickers and filthy naked children; open sewers, open cooking fires, packs of big, brown rats scurrying amongst rotting piles of garbage. In downtown Bangalore the money is high-rise; from there the poverty spreads outwards for miles in every direction like a stain.
The heat is dying down by the time I arrive back at Mysore; I walk down the tracks to the over bridge, climb down the embankment and walk over to the Mayura Hoysala. I order a Kingfisher in the courtyard restaurant and exchange pleasantries with the waiter. He tells me he is finished for the day and asks whether I would like to visit his home and have supper, which his wife is preparing. I go to my room, change my shirt and then climb onto the pillion for the ride out to Kuvempunagar, a small suburb on the southern outskirts of town. The difference between the cacophony of Bangalore and this leafy corner of Mysore could not be more stark. The narrow lanes are clean, quiet and free of traffic, stray dogs and eunuchs. The home is small - four rooms on the bottom floor of a modest two story house: two bedrooms, living room and kitchen. The toilet is in a small alcove near the back door and the bucket-shower is in the alley behind the house. Piles of coconut husks dry on shelves in the kitchen for use in the stove, and an old colour television takes up most of the living room wall. The whole place is spotlessly clean and the smell of home cooking wafts from the little kitchen. I am introduced to their son - an intelligent and polite 18 year old - who plugs my MP3 player into an ancient stereo and plays "Hard Day's Night" at full volume. The sound of The Beatles echoing around this sleepy neighborhood on the edge of Mysore as the sun settles on the horizon is unexpectedly satisfying. I eat supper with the family at a small table in the dining room; I am given the only chair while everyone else stands or shares a stool. There is a spicy South Indian chicken curry, sambar, chutney and steamed dosai all prepared with fresh herbs, spices and produce from Devaraja market in a cramped kitchen over one gas burner - far and away the best Indian food I have ever tasted. However hard I try, the family will accept no money to help with the cost of the food, even though it became clear during the meal that they had bought the chicken only when they learned I was coming.
I ride the Suzuki 150 motorbike back to the Mayura Hoysala with the son giving directions from the pillion; the roads are almost empty this late in the evening and to his delight I get the Suzuki up to 80kmh on a long stretch - which he confides is the fastest he's ever been on his bike. I drink a Kingfisher in the restaurant, which is as empty now as it was early this morning, and then lie on my bed under the slowly rotating ceiling fan. I have another early start in the morning, but instead of a WDM to take me to my next destination, it will be a bus.

Mysore Junction

I go down to the empty courtyard restaurant at seven o'clock in the morning and surprise the waiter who is dozing in a chair outside the kitchen door. I forgo the complimentary South Indian breakfast of idli or dosai with sambar in favour of a steaming glass of black coffee and pick at the Vijay Times. Today the lead story is Bangalore's stray dog menace: yesterday, for the second time in a month, a child was mauled to death by one of the packs of wild dogs that roam the city streets. Officials blame the illegal mutton and chicken stalls that dump their waste on the streets for the dogs to feed on, making them bloodthirsty and aggressive, while the residents cite casual disregard for the entire problem by the governing council as the underlying cause. I signal the waiter for more coffee and consult Mysore And Around. The 08.30 Passenger's second stop on the line back to Bangalore is Srirangapattna, a ruined, walled temple complex on an island in the River Cauvery, site of the 1799 Battle Of Mysore against the British colonial forces. I finish my coffee, gather my notebook, camera and daypack and walk down Jansi Lakshmibai Road towards Mysore Junction station. I wait at the traffic lights to cross the intersection with Dhanavanthri Road; as in Debrecen in Hungary, there is a countdown display above the lights to tell motorists how long they will have to wait for a green light. The stopped traffic in front of me waits until there is fifteen seconds left and, ignoring the still red light, pulls off into the oncoming traffic with a screech of tyres and a cacophony of blaring horns. The junction grinds to a halt, a confusion of cars, scooters and rickshaws fighting for a passage through the gridlock. I use the distraction to weave through the traffic to the safety of the far pavement and continue towards the station. I buy a 10 Rupee Second Class Unreserved ticket to Srirangapattna and back from the General Ticket window and then stand beneath the station's elegant clock tower and smoke a Wills Classic. It is a building of shuttered windows and wide verandas and stands at the end of a broad, tree lined avenue - a classic post-colonial Indian railway station. I buy a small glass of milky coffee on platform 1 and watch an old WDS shunting a pair of windowless red coaches around the carriage sidings; part of the Accident Relief Train to provide emergency medical facilities for crashes and derailments, or as the Vijay Times describes such incidents, mishaps.
Mysore Junction is ostensibly the convergence of three routes: The line South to Chamarajanagar; the Northern division to Hassan and Mangalore; and the mainline that follows a Northeastern course to Bangalore for connections to Chennai and the rest of the Indian Railways network. But the only trains running are on the Bangalore section: the Chamarajanagar line is undergoing conversion from metre to broad gauge, and as it is only a branch line terminating at a small unknown town, progress is painfully slow; the major route to Hassan and Mangalore has already been converted but has yet to open. The reason for this can be seen in the sidings at the North end of Mysore Junction: lines of YDM diesels and rakes of coaches stranded on the few hundred feet of metere gauge track left in the yard. They are perfectly serviceable, but completely useless; they are landlocked, stranded and surrounded by lines they can't run on. And even though table 20 in Trains At A Glance shows train 6517 the Yesvantpur-Mangalore Express departing Mysore at 22.35 daily for Hassan and the coast, an addendum states Date of introduction to be notified later. South Western Railways simply do not have the stock to operate the service, even though the track is ready. Imagine converting your domestic electricity supply from 110v to 240v but neglecting to budget for new appliances: brand new wiring, perfectly good washing machine and DVD player, but they won't work together and you have no money left for new ones. New broad gauge track, plenty of metre gauge YDM diesels that can't use it and no money for replacement WDMs or WDP-4s.
The station clock is showing 8.10 and the heat of the day is slowly starting to build. A blue WDM-2 draws a long line of coaches out of the sidings behind me and then propels them into platform two for the morning Passenger train; a roundel on its nose reads "Diesel Shed - Krishnarajapurnam" - Bangalore's main locomotive shed, which would be very unhappy if Mysore sent one of its engines off to Mangalore and the Konkan Railway on the new broad gauge line. I leave my bottle of water on a hard wooden seat next to a barred open window in the leading Luggage-Cum-Second Class carriage, stand on the platform in the hot sunshine and watch the driver walk round the WDM, opening engine covers, checking brake blocks and wiping pulped flies from the cab windows. I walk over to him and ask what he thinks of the WDMs. He is surprised by my knowledge of railways and amazed when I ask whether he prefers the ALCO or General Motors engined locomotives. He likes them both, but the visibility from a WDP-4 is a lot better than a WDM. He shows me around the cab and is pleased when I remark how clean it is inside; it's as well looked after as MAV Techniks Hungarian M61 or any goggle-eyed 754 in the Czech Republic. We chat a little more down on the platform until he looks at his watch and excuses himself. Back in the cab, he completes the last of his paperwork and then hits the air horns for departure. I climb back into my coach just as the train begins to edge along the platform and sit in the open doorway with my feet on the outside step - foot board riding, one of Indian Railways great pleasures. Some caution is required when deciding where and when to board ride: firstly, it is not generally accepted in FC (first class), CC (chair car) or 2AC and 3AC ( two and three tier air-conditioned sleeping cars) where signs above the doors discourage the practice and coach attendants actively prohibit it; and secondly, the cleanliness of the SC (sleeper class) or Unreserved coach in which it seems to be a perfectly acceptable way to travel. Unreserved and Sleeper class are usually chronically overcrowded, and on long journeys become filthy with discarded food, spit and overflowing toilets; the open doorways are used as an alternative convenience, which is blown back onto the doorhandles, threshold and the inside of the door itself. The Mysore-Bangalore Passenger is fresh from the carriage sidings where it has been cleaned since the previous days return journey, so my doorstep is free of the pervasive smell and crusted remains of human waste. The WDM-2 draws the train past the lines of redundant YDMs and metre gauge coaches, crosses the point work where the unused Hassan-Mangalore section waits for a train and accelerates past the goods yard and a cluster of brightly painted Tata trucks waiting to unload a rake of goods wagons that has just arrived behind a pair of orange WDGs. We pause briefly at a small halt a few kilometres out of Mysore where one or two passenger alight and then the WDM starts to pick up speed along the single track line. From my seat in the doorway, the noise and fumes are overwhelming; we rattle over level crossings where the barriers are so close I could touch them and fly over river bridges that have no parapets or railings so that I am looking straight down at the water 40 feet below. The paddy fields are bright green in the morning sun, the sky a cloudless powder blue; the breeze cools me as I lean forward and watch the exhaust billowing from the WDM as the driver piles on the power to climb a gradient - it is unlike any railway trip I have taken in any other country, almost perfection.
We cross a long bridge across the Cauvery and slow for the river island station at Srirangapattna; I leave the train, walk up to the pedestrian crossing and watch as it pulls out and crosses the bridge on the far side of the island. As the engine's air horns fade into the distance, the signal at the South end of the curving platform flashes to green; within minutes an express headed by two WDMs rumbles through the station in the opposite direction with a non-stop express from Bangalore, having waited for my train to clear the passing loop somewhere out of sight on the mainland.
Srirangapattna station is a sleepy country halt with one ticket window and a small chai stall and waiting room; an abandoned signal cabin sits at the South end of the only platform, almost hidden under a vast banyan tree. The steel bridge that brought the Bangalore Passenger onto the island, and the one to the North that took it back to shore are paralleled by the stone viaducts of the old metre gauge line, lifted long ago, and are used by the locals on foot and on bicycles to cross the river. I pick my way along the steep path that leads down to the river and follow a narrow track beneath the crumbling walls of the ruined temple fort. It is hot, still and quiet; I see a woman washing clothing and spreading it to dry on the huge rocks that rise from the riverbed, but otherwise the is nobody in sight. The wide, shallow river stretches as far as the eye can see before disappearing into the blue-green haze of the distant jungle. I walk to the tip of the island and back along the North bank; I have barely covered half the distance before my two litre bottle of water is finished. I pass the Sriranganatha temple - slowly decaying behind a veil of creepers and a barbed wire fence - and walk through the dusty little town. The term backwater could have been invented for Srirangapattna: not much happens here, and what little does, happens at a very unhurried pace. There is a "Meals Ready" hall on the main street, a small Yatri hostel and a few General Sales stalls; there is no Cold Beer Parlour or hotel bar, and no restaurant or Souvenir-Cum-Bookshop. I sit on a bench under the shade of the station canopy and wait for the train back to Mysore; after forty minutes I walk back to the ticket counter and ask when the 11.30 Passenger will arrive, as it's already twenty minutes late. I am told it is running 2 hours behind schedule. I sit on my bench and decide to wait for the Chennai-Mysore Shatabdi Express: with any luck it will get held at the South signal to let a Bangalore train enter the passing loop between here and Mysore. Three RPF officers laze on one of the benches outside the waiting room; they have no AK-47s, no Lachti sticks and two of them are wearing flip-flops with their khaki uniforms. The oldest and most senior one rises slowly from the bench, stretches, yawns, climbs down from the platform and crosses the track to a small yellow washed building with a sign outside reading Railway Traffic Training Compound. He lets himself through a gate in the picket fence and checks if the laundry he has hung from the students' demonstration Speed Restriction and Shunt Limit signs is dry. Satisfied, he ambles back to the platform edge and summons his juniors to gather his washing and fold it into the two bags he gives each of them.
A long blast of an air horn splits the silent early afternoon, and I look down the platform to the signal at the edge of the bridge: Red - for the moment, at least. The Shatabdi comes into the station at speed, the driver only braking when he spots the signal, which is still at red. I climb the steps into the Sleeper Class coach while it is still moving, just as the signal flicks to green and the driver powers-up the WDM and takes off again: split second timing - the train didn't actually stop.
I spend the rest of the afternoon fighting with a computer at Cyber Zone and walk away feeling defeated and frustrated. I sit on the rooftop terrace at Shipashri Bar And Restaurant with a cold Kingfisher and watch the light and heat fade from the sky. A very large Indo-Chinese couple arrive and sit at the table facing mine; they wear identical pudgy frowns and stare at their menus silently. They reel off a long order to the waiter and then wait wordlessly for their meal to arrive, ignoring each other completely. The waiter appears with a chicken sizzler and chips; their eyes light up and suddenly they're both smiling and chatting now that they can share their one common interest - food. An enormous bowl of fried rice arrives, and then another one; two curries and more chips; bottles of ketchup and Kinleys Soda which they shovel spoonfulls of sugar into. They are gluttons; they have barely swallowed one mouthful before the next load is hovering before their fat lips. They belch as loudly as the egg-sucking man in the Kwality Bar And Restaurant, hiccup and slow their pace; but they don't give up. They finish every last grain of rice and clean every shred of meat from the chicken bones. The man reaches under his bulging stomach and loosens the button of his trousers while the woman slumps back in her chair and cradles her belly. They revert to morbid silence until they spot the waiter crossing the terrace with their desserts. It is a disgusting spectacle, and one I refuse to continue witnessing; I leave a 100 Rupee note under my half-finished bottle of Kingfisher, walk down to the street and go back to the Mayura Hoysala.
I sit on the veranda with a Kingfisher and idly glance at the room service menu: at this rate, I will be on hunger strike in roughly eight days time.
I'm still sitting outside in the warm night air when I hear the air horns of a WDM announcing the departure of the 23.30 Mysore-Bangalore Passenger. That is my indulgence - helped along with a little Kingfisher: is that so bad?

In Karnataka

I wake just after seven o'clock to the sound of the kites' high pitched call from the trees outside my veranda, step into the bathroom and open the shutters. It is far hotter and more humid than the fan cooled bedroom even at this hour, bright sunlight streaming through the window and warming the floor tiles. I bucket shower, shave and then walk down to the courtyard restaurant for coffee, picking up my copy of The Vijay Times from the doormat outside my room on the way. I am the only westerner in the hotel; the other guests are holidaying Indian families and a couple of business men in smart casual clothes carrying mobile phones. At one of the tables a small group of pilgrims from the Yatri Niwas ( pilgrim hostel ) next door to the Mayura Hoysala are quietly eating a traditional breakfast of dosai and iddli before setting off to visit the temples within the walls of the Maharajha's Palace. I order a black coffee and it arrives a few minutes later in a tall glass that is so hot I have to wrap a napkin around it to lift it. The headline of The Vijay Times jumps off the page: "66 Killed as blasts strike Indo-Pak friendship train". Just before midnight, while I was sleeping in my comfortable bed under the cooling breeze from the ceiling fan, low powered explosives surrounded by cans of petrol were detonated in two coaches of the Samjhauta Express - know as the Friendship Train - as it travelled between New Delhi and Lahore in Pakistan. Rather than blow the coaches apart, the devices were designed to cause a huge fire; unaware of the two burning carriages, the driver continued at 110kmh until alerted by a pointsman at a level crossing, and the train finally came to a stop outside the village of Shiva some two and a half kilometres later. By that time more than 60 passengers had been burned to death and 50 more seriously injured. There is no entry for the Samjhauta Express in Trains At A Glance, even though it made it's inaugural bi-weekly run in 1976: it is a Special Express, unadvertised, each run essentially a one-off - such is the nature of the political relationship between India and Pakistan.
I walk down Dhanavatri Road towards Devaraja Market and find a department store called Fab City tucked down a side street just off the main road. It looks as if it has been plucked from the centre of Luton or Carlisle and slotted neatly between the "Meals Ready" halls and tailoring shops that line Narayana Shastri Road; the steel and glass three story facade towering incongruously above the dusty street where chai wallahs vie for trade and goats and cows mooch around in piles of litter and coconut husks. I leave my bag at the security desk outside in exchange for a small brass token stamped Number 14 and walk through the sliding doors into bright fluorescent lighting and deeply chilled air. Fab City sells everything from toothpaste to televisions, trainers to tomato ketchup. There is at least one member of staff in a bright red Fab City polo shirt in each aisle on all three floors, and several more milling around each department - all doing very little other than following a small handful of customers around the store. Along with the guard on the desk outside and the one on the front door, more security is posted at intervals up and down the central spiral staircase and outside the lifts, and two mobile patrols circle wherever a shopper pauses long enough to browse the items on a shelf. It is a very uncomfortable experience, one that makes you think twice about daring to touch, let alone pick up any of their obviously precious stock. With sweating palms and a no doubt guilty look, I select a notebook from the stationary department, hurry downstairs and find some shampoo to furtively take to the computerised checkout. An vaguely suspicious assistant packs my shopping into a bag, seals it with a plastic tie, stamps my receipt "Paid" and tells me I am free to leave the store. After showing the sealed bag and the irrefutable proof of the receipt to both the doorman and the guard at the security desk where I left my bag, I walk into the hot, noisy, dusty and undoubting atmosphere of the real Mysore.
I walk along Sayaji Roa Road and turn into a narrow passage that leads into Devaraja Market, a warren of covered stalls piled with spices, incense, pyramids of the spectacularly coloured powder used to celebrate Holi, mountains of bananas and vegetables of every imaginable variety. The sun beats down on the narrow paths between the stalls and the mass of people who wind their way through the maze. The scent of corriander and sandalwood mixes with the coppery smell of blood from the plucked chickens and mutton carcasses that hang upside down in a cloud of flies outside the slaughterhouse. The sheer variety and quantity of produce is incredible; from the familiar to the unidentifiable, it is all carried into the market on the heads of a swarm of coolis, bent double under the weight of their loads. I walk through another passage entrance at the south of the market and find the Paras Bhavan "Meals Ready" hall. I order a fresh lime soda - it is a pure vegetarian establishment and therefore serves no alcohol, not even Kingfisher - and an Aloo Puri Masala, both of which are extremely good and are embarrassingly inexpensive.
I spend a frustrating couple of hours at the Cyber Zone internet cafe, which is tucked into the attic of a "Gifts Emporium" near Fab City and boasts four elderly PCs, none of which has a CD-ROM, USB port or adequate processing speed. I give up trying to work after the second power cut leaves the room in hot darkness for twenty minutes, walk back along Dhanavantri Road and find the partially hidden entrance to Mysore Railway Museum on the far side of the station. India's National Railway Museum opened in Delhi in 1977 and was followed by the announcement to establish regional museums in Chennai, Pune and Mysore, the latter of which opened in 1979 and remains the only fulfilment of the plan. The museum comprises of a small selection of rusting and dilapidated metre and narrow gauge steam engines, a few wagons and rotting wooden coaches and a small building housing two carriages of the maharajah's private train, all laid out in an overgrown garden. The history of Indian Railways and the opportunity to describe and showcase it's achievements have been squandered at the Mysore Railway Museum; the exhibits stand in dereliction exactly where they were dumped 28 years ago, and nothing new has joined them since; there is no information to help interpret what is being seen - not even a guide book is published - no literature at the empty souvenir stand ; there is nowhere to buy refreshments and no knowledgeable curator to answer your questions. I am the only visitor, and the museum grounds have the stillness and silence associated with long standing abandonment or evacuation.
I quietly leave and walk down Vinoba Road and find an anonymous bar that has nothing more than a McDowells Whisky poster above the door to advertise its business. I order a Kingfisher, carry it into the back room and sit at one of the dirty Formica topped tables. It is a typical local Indian bar: dingy paintwork, litter strewn floor, a television blaring a Bollywood soundtrack and groups of men drinking too much super strong beer and White Mischief vodka. The napkins in the chipped and yellowing plastic holder are squares of torn newspaper. The Indian man opposite me pushes away two empty quarter bottles of McDowells No1 whiskey and orders another, along with a Haywards 9000 beer and a snack. He is overweight, sweating and has thick, coiffed hair and a stomach that strains at the buttons of his red nylon shirt. He pours half of the fresh bottle into his glass, tops it up with a small amount of water from a plastic jug on the table and drinks it straight back in one go. He scoops up a handful of masala peanuts from the bowl in front of him and washes them down with a gulp of the super strong beer. As he pours the last few drops of whiskey into his glass and dilutes it with some Haywards 9000, the barman pushes a plate of fried eggs across the table to him. He lights a Navy Cut cigarette, balances it in the ashtray, lifts the plate to his mouth, places his thick, moist lips over an egg and with a slurp sucks the yolk out of its nesting place in the milky, undercooked albumen. He rinses his mouth with whisky and beer, sucks out the second yolk, wipes a slick of sweat from his forehead and belches loudly. He fits the Navy Cut into the corner of his mouth and pushes pieces of egg white past the filter with his fingers while he smokes. He wipes his greasy fingers on his huge, flared denim jeans, stubs his cigarette and lowers his head to the plate to hoover up the remaining lumps of runny egg before washing it down with the last of the McDowells and Haywards.
I walk back to the Mayura Hoysala in the warmth of the gathering dusk and sit in the courtyard restaurant with a Kingfisher. I look at the menu, immediately see "Eggs To Order" and push it as far away across the table as I can. I take my drink upstairs and sit on the veranda with Trains At A Glance and a booklet entitled Mysore And Around. Much like The Samjhauta Express, there is no mention in Trains of any local Passenger services from Mysore; but my locally published booklet shows an Unreserved Ordinary train leaving at 8.30 in the morning which will call at Srirangatpattna. I order another Kingfisher from room service, shower, put a few things in my bag for the morning and lie on top of the bed under the slowly rotating ceiling fan, ignoring any thoughts of food.

Deccan Shatabdi

I wake the doorman at 5am and send him off to find someone to settle my bill; he reappears five minutes later with the bleary-eyed, half-asleep manager who is not at all happy to be awake at this hour. I pick up an auto-rickshaw in front of Egmore station, cross over the stinking river for the last time and arrive at Chennai Central in the sultry, pre-dawn gloom. Every inch of floorspace in the concourse is covered with prone and sleeping figures, mountains of luggage and cotton-wrapped parcels with only a six foot margin around the edges of the rectangular hall free and navigable; hundreds of tired passengers and resigned yatris waiting for hours or the whole night until a train arrives to take them on their journeys or pilgrimages. I buy a cup of sweet, milky coffee from the chai counter of yesterday's waking dream and find train 2007 - the Chennai-Mysore Shatabdi Express - waiting over the footbridge at platform 17. It has only eight coaches, seven of which are air-conditioned chair cars and the eighth a pantry car, and a WAM-4 electric waiting silently at the head. I find my name next to seat 49 on the reservations list posted at the door to coach C3, stow my bag in the overhead luggage rack and then discreetly smoke a Wills Classic in a dimly lit corner of the platform - an indulgence that could cost me a 200 Rupees fine should an RPF officer emerge from the shadows and challenge me.
The WAM-4 make light work of hustling the short train out of Central station and onto the flat, dark, featureless plains west of Chennai, cruising at a steady 90kph on the straight and level double track mainline. Trains At A Glance describes the Shatabdi Express as a Superfast Intercity on which "hospitality treats you to meal and snacks" and adding that "before you are through, your destination has arrived"; which seems to cheat the laws of physics. It is second only to the Rajdhani Expresses - the pride of Indian Railways, offering multi-cuisine catering, piped music and deluxe air-conditioned accommodation - and is followed by the cheaper Jan Shatabdi ( self catering and without air-conditioning ) and the Sapark Kranti Express which is only slightly faster than an ordinary Mail or Express, though a lot quicker than a lowly Passenger train. The Shatabdi is, however, ten times more expensive than a Passenger train, and costs five times as much for the same journey on a Mail or ordinary Express; and if you choose the Executive Chair Car, the price doubles again.
The coach attendant points at my cigarette as I stand in the open doorway at the end of the coach, unsuccessfully trying to light it with a tiny box of Bison Wax Matches in the 60mph slipstream.
"Two-hundred Rupees," he says, writing the figure invisibly on his left palm with his right forefinger.
"No fine," I tell him, holding the now smoking Wills Classic outside the door, "cigarette not in train".
"Fifty, fifty." He writes the revised figure on his palm.
"No fifty, and no baksheesh. Go away." I guide him by the shoulder to the connecting gangway of the next coach, leave him there and ignore him.
I return to my seat as breakfast is served: iddli, sambar and copra chutney - the traditional morning meal for millions of South Indians. The food is as good as any I've eaten in Dhabas, Tiffin Houses and "Meals Ready" halls anywhere, and better than some restaurants I have come across. Indian Railways and food have a close relationship which is carefully maintained by their Catering and Tourism Corporation - IRCTC. It is fresh, properly prepared and affordable; a world away from the bland, processed baguettes and microwaved burgers sold for scandalous prices on British trains. Even before privatisation, when important trains often had a proper buffet car, the incumbent Travellers Fare managed to turn itself into a laughing stock by offering the iconic, if infamous British Rail Ham Sandwich - that anti-hero of railway catering. But "how can I be sure of the quality of catering services on trains and at stations?" asks Your Questions Answered on page 264 of Trains At A Glance, just in case you have any concerns. It answers with advice about insisting on a "Cash Memo" for all services, consulting the menu, ordering with the waiter or coach attendant well in advance and recording your "suggestions" in the "complaints book" - which "can be called from the pantry car at any time by the passenger." But on the subject of the actual quality of the food itself, Trains remains silent. With unintended irony, or perhaps a degree of prescience, the next frequently asked question is addressed more fully: "Is medical assistance available on trains?"
The train climbs steadily onto the edge of the Deccan Plateau and the flat plains give way to low hills and scrubby bush, interspersed with paddy fields and swathes of nodding palms. The line begins to twist and rise, riding high embankments and diving into deep cuttings in the reddish-brown earth. Huge boulders dot the landscape, sometimes standing alone and balanced at odd angles, other times piled into enormous conical, gravity defying mounds.
We arrive at Bangalore city at eleven o'clock and pause for fifteen minutes while an army of cleaners board the train with fox-tail sweeping brushes and vats of disinfectant for the toilets, and the pantry car boys bring on more supplies for the Shatabdi lunch. The city's technology fuelled wealth has become something of an Indian cliche, but it is immediately obvious and completely inescapable. So too is the disparity between the glass-and-steel high-rise office blocks, the opulent apartment complexes and the grinding poverty of the rag-pickers and slum-dwellers living beside the railway line. The WAM-4 is replaced with a South Western Railways WDP-4 for the run on the single track, 135km un-electrified line to Mysore. The designation identifies it as a broad gauge passenger diesel locomotive, but it is a very different machine from the familiar WDM. It is an American design, and shares the same long bonnet layout as the WDM, but there the similarity ends: it is modern, micro-processor controlled and instead of the Chug of an ALCO engine, there is a muted whirring from the General Motors diesel that provides the power.
By the time we pull out of Bangalore, the train is thirty minutes behind schedule. The driver gives the WDP its head once we have cleared the sprawling suburbs, pushing the 4000 horsepower high-speed diesel engine to full power on the climbs and straights and then braking for the crossings and bends. It is noticeably quicker than the old WDM, especially so with only eight coaches: a WDP-4 is capable of handling a 24 coach, 1400 tonne train at 110kph and could easily take the Shatabdi to 160kph and beyond if the track and operating rules permitted it.
The coach attendant calls me from my post at the open door back to my seat where lunch has been served - biryani, raitha, roti and chutney. Even if Trains declines to comment on the quality of the food, I will vouch for it. Back at the open door, I lean out and watch the track unfold in front of the WDP. We are travelling very quickly with the long hood of the locomotive leading, the driving cab at the back: after riding on the WDM in Puri, I am aware just how little visibility the driver will have, and how the second man will be calling warnings to him from his position in the right hand seat. We approach a long, sweeping bend and curve through the centre of a small town, huts and concrete apartment blocks crowding the line, ragged scraps of woven nylon made into makeshift, tented hovels at the edge of the tracks. The driver touches the brakes as we lean into the turn, locks the air-horns on and then pulls the the power handle wide open, scattering herds of grazing goats and sending rooting pigs into a blind panic, running in circles and crashing into each other. We pass the level crossing in the middle of town at the best part of 60mph, people turning their backs against the storm of litter and dust sucked up in our wake, their children covering their ears and screaming in fright, then hurtle through the little station in a cloud of exhaust fumes and noise. It is both exhilarating and frightening leaning out of the doorway and seeing the improbably narrow passage the rails follow between the buildings and bastees streak by: if the train derailed here, at this speed, it would demolish half of this small, quiet town. The pace never slackens: through coffee plantations, villages and paddy fields, climbing still higher onto the Mysore plateau, the WDP at full blast with the air horns locked on for what seems like minutes at a time.
We cross the River Cauvery at Srirangapattana and arrive at Mysore Junction at 1.10pm - only ten minutes late after the hair-raising run from Bangalore. I take an auto-rickshaw to the Hotel Mayura Hoysala - a restored colonial mansion - and check into a spacious, well appointed room with a veranda overlooking the Mysore-Chamrajnagar division of South Western Railways. I am sunburned from two hours in the hot wind at the open door of the train, but Mysore is perceptibly cooler and less humid than the steaming cauldron of Chennai. I order a cold Kingfisher from room service, watch a WDM-2 bring a local passenger service into the station, shower, change and then go out into the warm evening air. I sit on the rooftop terrace of Shilpashri Bar And Restaurant and watch the sun sink over Mysore, wondering how much skill it would take to drive a WDP to the very limit on the Bangalore-Mysore division; and when I will feel hungry again after the Deccan Shatabdi hospitality.