Outside Context

One of the unique things about India, and one that you never quite come to terms with, is the trains. I would even go as far as to say that if you could under­stand Indian trains, then you might well lay claim to being truly at home in India. For almost everything that there is to exper­i­ence in this wild and beau­ti­ful coun­try is cap­able of being exper­i­enced by rail.

You see all sorts of things just by walk­ing into a sta­tion. They are often grand build­ings left over from the Brit­ish age of iron and func­tion as hotel for thou­sands of home­less trav­el­ers of all types. They have some of the best and very worst toi­lets in the world, and for some over the edge of the plat­form is pre­ferred. They are often smelly, fre­quently dirty and occa­sion­ally hor­rid. But, for every bad thing there exists a good to bal­ance it out. Sta­tions are packed with fam­il­ies play­ing together, sleep­ing and eat­ing together. There is the bustle and fizz of people meet­ing, people depart­ing from loved ones and people wish­ing they were on their way. The best book­shops I found in India were oper­ated out of mobile stores. Almost any­thing you could want is for sale on these strips of con­crete, and after hours on a train you will eat almost any­thing (no mat­ter where it has been). They are amaz­ing places, a sort of nexus point and a melt­ing pot of cul­tures. The gaps between the high and low fade away on these platforms. They are to India what black­cabs are to Lon­don. Almost, but not quite, romantic.

People sleep­ing at a Station.

India has inves­ted heav­ily in its trains, a trick they learned from the Vic­tori­ans, and some­thing we back home should con­sider care­fully. Short of fly­ing, trains remain the quint­es­sen­tial method of trans­port around India. The tracks are every­where. All the major cit­ies are linked, and most of the minor ones. In fact, we never struggled to find a train going any­where we wanted to go, from the high tech city of Bengaluru (Ban­galore) to the deep desert city of Jaisalmer.

We just struggled to get on one or two.

They are not slow either. For while a jour­ney, say from Varanasi to Agra, takes place over one night, a simple look out of the win­dow shows how the train is ham­mer­ing out the miles at mind-meltingly fast speeds. It’s just the coun­try is massive. Even­tu­ally, train trans­port became a wel­come break for us. We would even plan our jour­ney around it and use it as a “free nights’ accom­mod­a­tion”. For see­ing into a heart of India, trains are your choice.

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