Rajasthan- Day 10- The Journey Back

I woke up early Monday morning, unable to sleep for fear that we would not make it back to Mumbai as we had planned. Since we didn't book the tickets as early as I had suggested, we were wait listed. We worked with a travel agent to attempt to get the tickets confirmed, and investigated other options for returning back. Unfortunately all trains for the week were booked, so we resorted to looking up plane tickets and I was uneasy at the thought of spending an additional $125 for a plane ticket (as that would pretty much be the budget for the remainder of my time in India including my trip to see the Taj Mahal in a week and a half). We managed to get on the VIP Quota waiting list, but had to wait until 11 to see if it would help.

Then it became 12:30... finally, the travel agent called back and two of us got confirmed seats. We were told to wait around 'til 1:30 to see if anymore were confirmed. So we ran out to quickly get food and agreed to be back to the guest house by 1:15. I was back by 1:10... and no one else was around. Our train left at 2:10.... finally at 1:45 all of us were there and had to run out to find a rickshaw to take us to the train station. Raced into the station, and then I was left to watch the bags while everyone went to collect more snacks. As I waited with a pile of luggage and a group of men staring at me and taking pictures of me, the train arrived, with my travelmates nowhere to be found. As the train arrived I watched the men board the second class car and it might be one of the most horrific sights I've seen, a mass of men piled onto the car, with men hitting each other, sticks batting at passengers, and people literally falling out the doorways and windows, in fact one person climbed over the car and fell down to the pavement, head first. I couldn't even imagine how many men packed into that car and how unsafe. But this is common practice, to have people hanging on to the side of the cars on a moving train. Finally, we were all gathered and loaded onto the train, in 1AC class (the highest class for train travel in India, and worth the $50).

We were technically riding illegally. We only had two confirmed tickets, but we agreed that we were just have two people per berth/bed and apparently this is common practice. We had paid for four tickets, so it wasn't like we were looking for a free ride, we just knew we would had to squish. Luckily for us the other two passengers for our cabin didn't plan to board until a stop a few hours later so we were able to spread out for the first part of our job. Our luck improved, when only one of the passengers boarded. The gentleman was very kind, and well connected to the railway, and said he didn't object if we wanted to share berths. He talked to us for quite a bit and managed to get the conductor to find more seats in the rest of the train. As it stood, another berth in the first class cabin opened up, he offered to move to it, and before sleep time we had an entire cabin with four berths to ourselves. I'm glad we risked it, since apparently we would have made it off the waiting list and on to the confirmation list if they had known a couple of passengers wouldn't show up.

I slept pretty poorly, but at least I slept a little. We arrived into Mumbai Central Station at about 8 am this morning, and of course faced the usual hassle getting a taxi, which is ironic, because all the taxis are metered here. My roommate started yelling at the cab drivers, which got us kicked out of one of the taxis. Finally we found a taxi who would take us back to the hostel at the metered rate. How exasperating!!! We reached our room, and of course found the usual cockroach. So I suppose it's Welcome Back to Mumbai, Leah... only 5 more weeks to go.

I will work on getting pictures up in the next few days, as they will tell a better story than I ever could!