We woke up at 6 o’clock, packed our packs and clutching our 2nd class, reserved berth tickets caught our favourite rickshaw for the 10 minute journey to Margao station where our train to Bangalore was set to leave at 8.07.
At the station our driver told us our train would leave from Platform 1. Now, never trust directions in India, so we asked 3 others. Platform 1 they all said. We were not convinced so to the Station Master we went. After walking across the tracks we waited for our train which arrived at 8.20 on Platform 2. We dived on expecting a scrum as we had been told, but all was calm. No problem.
Our reserved compartment had just one elderly Indian occupant, baring his feet at us through his holy socks. We chatted. Where were we form, etc, all the usual crap. Understanding Indians is difficult but he rubbed it in by having a stammer. Still, we got by.
Enter Reservation Officer with lists. Oh, oh. We are in First Class. 4X as expensive as Second. We’re not on his list. We feign ignorance. We must move soon to where all the others sit. We get him chatting, give him sweets, show him photos. But it’s no good. After 2 hours we have to move. Holy sock man is left alone looking sad.
Reservation man takes us to Second Class and shifts loads of people so that we can have a window seat. Thank you Mr Reservation man. However we are on the slowest train in the world. Snails overtake us. Approximately travelling at a fast walking pace and stopping at every station. The journey should take 22 hours but we will arrive by mid December at this rate.
At stations there is bedlam. From even the smallest stations appear dozens of people jostling along the platform, coming to the window selling chai, sweets, pan, chai, samosas, cola, chai, peanuts, chai, chai, ice cream, chai, etc, etc. Some get on the train. Then the obligatory beggars come along, limbless, blind, starving, children. ‘Hello Baba’ they keep saying, touching you, staring at you, raising their hands to their mouths. It’s pathetic.
If we had given everyone who asked 1R we would be coming home now. Very occasionally we give the worst looking ones a bread roll, but it is best just to ignore them. It is hard, but the only thing to do.
Who is this at our window? It’s holy socks. He’s lonely and missing us. Would we like to have lunch with him at one o’clock? he asked and forced a ‘yes’ from us by eating most of the samosas we have just bought. Off the train goes.
‘Where are you coming from?’ It’s Krishna Murti. He’s escaped into our compartment from the one next door. This is about 5 feet by 8 feet and contains about ten of his relatives. They are on a 600 mile pilgramage to a big Hindu Temple near Madras so the priests can shave his 10 month old son’s head. A fucking long way to go for a haircut I tell him. He looks blank and disappears. He reappears and sits down clutching said son. The kid is nearly bald anyway. The kid looks at us, probably the first white people he’s seen, and pisses buckets all over Krishna. The son is handed back to the other compartment. Krishna speaks good English so we chat, very slowly though. His relatives keep coming in and soon most of them are in our compartment.
We order a snack from the steward wallah and pull in to a station. Chai, beggars etc. Our snack arrives. A big meal for 30R. We are stuffed. Another station arrives and so does Mr holy socks. Do we want to for lunch now? We tell him our tummies feel as fat as Buddha’s. He looks disappointed and off he goes.
Well, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. No station, but everyone jumps off. The reason?
There is a nice waterfall so the kind driver has stopped so all can look at it. Hoards of Indian tourists zoom off. Click, click go all their 110 cameras. The train toots, they all pile back on and off we go. The train trundles on and then stops in the middle of nowhere again. A waterfall? Perhaps a sight? No, it’s a police raid to catch fare dodgers. Uniformed and plain clothed police are swarming all around and over the train. Many fare dodgers are being led away. Many are running away across the fields. Some icecream sellers leave all their gear behind and run. A fine is more expensive than replenishing their stuff. The police, cocky and corrupt, take it away to eat or sell.
Off we go. Krishna goes next door to eat. He brings in huge plates of rice curd for us to eat. We just about force one plateful down and he says to save the other for later. Krishna appears to eat about three times his body weight each day.
More stations with their ‘chai’ ’chai’, ‘baba baba’, and lepers and beggars.
In the middle of nowhere we stop again. Peering through the bars on the windows we now see dozens of men, women and children are risking their lives hanging onto the train with massive bundles of wood. They collect the wood illegally from forestries and cling onto the train until it reaches a big town where they sell the wood (about 10R a bundle. 40p) to buy food to live. Today however is not their day; there are police on board. The police strut about and carry 3’6” bamboo poles. They use these to beat the people off the outside of the train. They chuck some of the wood away but throw good bundles into the train so they can use them or sell them themselves.
The train begins to move off. The peasants try to hang onto the ouside and are beaten. Some stronger ones manage to hang on and off we go. The train stops and this is all repeated. This happens about four times.
We leave a station and about 2 miles further on we stop again. We look through the bars but no one is hanging on. Some people are wandering around with their heads in their hands and there are police. What has happened now? I, along with most of the male contingent, jump off the train.
Everyone is looking under the train so I do too. On the track under our carriage is a hand and a forearm. There are bloody bit of sari spread along the track, and on the sleepers and wheels are bits of human flesh and guts. A piece of liver is readily recognised. Our train has run someone over. Various groups of men gather and chatter.
2 carriages up they are attempting to move the lady’s head and pelvis and legs which are wedged in between the wheels. Not a pretty sight.
Various theories are put together. 1- She was pushed. 2- She was hanging on and fell off. 3- Suicide.
Number 3 seems to be the popular choice, probably as this will involve less work for the police.
We’ve been stopped for about an hour and now people are getting annoyed that they will miss their connections!! So off we go.
We chat to Krishna and chuck his rice dinner out of the window. He disappears and returns with cake and nuts. We nibble some and tell him we will finish it later. (We chucked it away).
Out of the window are banana plantations, sugar, cotton, flocks of budgerigars, eagles etc. All incredible sights.
The obligatory photo session then takes place with Krishna and family and Pete and Slappy. Kodak shares rocket.
The bars on the windows he tells us, are not to stop you falling out but to stop people diving in.
No wonder so many die in Indian train crashes (900 crashes/year) as they can’t get out.
I venture a trip to the bog. I should have put my scuba kit on as the bog’s awash. Each jolt sends a wave of piss over my feet. Lovely. Hubli station comes and Krishna goes to get another train, his family clutching various low denomination English coins. People come to the window, chai, food and ganga. We decline for now. There’s only the two of us in our compartment now so things are looking good for a good night’s kip. It’s 6 o’clock, so in about 10 hours we’ve done about 60 miles!!
We get up into our berths protecting our packs by using them as pillows. Indian railways are a thief’s paradise.
A big, fat Indian gets in and a big, skinny one with a bobblehat, as well as mosquitoes. My big feet stick out over the edge of the berth into the corridor. We drink a bit of Southern Comfort, still from duty free, read a bit and try to sleep at 8.30. Sleeping is very difficult; it’s noisy, bumpy and uncomfortable, but we occasionally doze off. That is until fat man decides to get up at 4-15 am.
He trundled off to the sink in the corridor and for the next 20 minutes tried to remove his lungs through his mouth. Snort, hack, cough and gob out the phlegm with a flourish. 20 minutes! I timed him. I was wide awake. He came back, cleaned his teeth and then gulped down a load of whisky, then went and coughed up for another 10 minutes. When he came back I fixed him with my icy stare and within 30 minutes the entire lot of men were up coughing their guts up. Repulsive. They are probably all dead of TB by now.
We pulled into a station. People were looking out of the windows. A load of monkeys, 20 – 30, were on the platform and in the trees. Suddenly a pack of dogs appeared and a dog grabbed a too slow baby monkey, killed it and left it on the platform. The monkeys went mad, chattering and dashing about. A passenger poured some water on the monkey to try and revive it, but it was dead. A forlorn looking monkey came and picked it up and took it away into the trees.
The train moved on. Finally we arrived at Bangalore at 7-45, incredibly only one hour late.
We picked up our packs and wandered, shattered and exhausted to the rickshaws and our 30R a night hotel.
One hell of a train journey, never to be forgotten and probably not to be repeated on the 7-30 Sevenoaks to Waterloo.
© text & images Pete Plug 2025
