ALL NIGHT TRAIN TO BIKANER

OK-The freaking train...

The day before we are to leave on this all night escapade, a Delhi to Pakistan train is the target of a terrorist attack—bombs, death, injuries. It is all over CNN in the hotel, but none of us mentions it. I think it is more alarming for Bob back home than it is for us…what is it about lightning never striking the same place twice?

We drive for hours to get to the station late at night. The train, meant to leave at 11:20PM, eventually leaves an hour late. When we climb down from our bus, dozens of men of all ages who seem to live in the parking lot descend upon the bus to help unload and porter our bags to the outdoor platform. The bus driver chooses two or three of what seem to be the oldest and feeblest men to put our gigantic and ridiculously heavy bags on their turban-wrapped heads to stagger up over the elevated stairwell and back down to the center train platform. We were standing around in the gloom on the ill-lit platform with distantly spaced bare bulbs for several minutes before our eyes adjusted and somebody noticed the cow just a few yards away, apparently waiting for her own train.

We are divided into groups of four for our sleeping cabins, with at least one man assigned to each cabin supposedly for safety, which in a group of eleven women and three guys is hard, but our handler who will get us as far as Bikaner is in one of the cabin groups. My group, consisting of Rebecca, Marianne, and myself are in a cabin together. We think the arrangement of just three of us with some extra space sounds sweet…until we learn that a stranger will be joining us for the night. Our bags are put into the cabins for us and we follow. A couple of our groups have boarded before the three of us, and sidled down the narrow passage…we can hear their laughter. Once we get to the sliding steel door of our cabin we know why. It feels like prison—our bags take up all of the floor space under and between the berths, which are plywood planks folded down from the wall with a vinyl pad over them. Two curtained windows are at the end and the space between the stacked berths left and right is about a foot. We can do nothing but laugh, and everyone starts roaming from cabin to cabin like kids who just got their camp assignments, making faces and jokes and sharing the thinly disguised horror that this is where we’ll sleep. Some disguises are thinner than others. It’s actually not that bad, but we ramp each other up feeding off the energy, and everyone bonds over it a bit. Our laughter is redoubled once the first person comes back with a report from the toilet closet at the end of the car, and we all trot down to see and gasp. It is an all steel room with a hole in the floor that opens to the track below, but has not seen the business end of a scrub brush for quite some time. Every surface inspires nightmares…and still it is funny. Some folks are settling down into the rooms as the one-hour delay ticks by, and an attendant comes and delivers small pillows, sheets, and threadbare blankets. My threesome is still waiting to see who our mystery roommate will be.
Eventually a group of five Indian men arrive, and the other four start good-naturedly ribbing the guy who drew the short straw and is stuck with us. He’s a great big bear of a man, but smiles wanly and just stacks his small bag on our huge pile, and kicks off his shoes to sit cross legged on the lower bunk across from me. Once the train starts moving, the doors are slid shut, and the big guys proceeds to pull, like a rabbit from a hat, several aluminum foil containers of food we never saw he had. His selections are quite pungent, to say the least. The three of us have made a Jonestown-like pact to swallow Ambien at the same time so we can sleep through the night, and now is the time since the guy has a several course meal ahead. He burps and champs his way through what must have been an enjoyable repast, and eventually kicks off his shoes to sleep…snoring and farting through the night. We have quieted down since his arrival, as if the teacher walked into class and all horsing around ceases immediately, but one of us barely stifles a giggle and it gets us all going.

In the morning, familiar sleepy faces pop out to the tight hallway as we see the dramatically altered landscape whizzing by. Rolling hills of khaki sand, scrubby trees, and grey-green thorn bushes with which we’ll grow all too familiar. Someone spots eagles in the trees, and an occasional peacock appears bobbing along. Villages of sandstone and mud buildings and what must certainly be cinder block and cement (though it is all sand colored) roll by and we make a few brief stops at some of them. As the sun is still on its upward way, we arrive in Bikaner and detrain.