Ladakh: Day One: Mumbai - Delhi

First of all, let me tender my apologies to all of you who have been reading the past few posts and getting increasingly bugged / irritated / frustrated, and waking up in the middle of the night screaming, "Just get on with it already!" and deeply frightening your bedmates. I also apologize for any unplanned pregnancies that may have resulted because of this.

It's 3:30 PM, and I'm in a rattling rickshaw, surrounded by luggage, heading for Bandra terminus station. It's happening. Finally. After years of planning, the Ladakh trip is on.

On the platform is Y & N. Surrounded by what looks like either the contents of the entire luggage coach, or the baggage quota of at least 5 middle-aged aunties from Chandigarh. Closer looks reveal, it's their rucksacks, knapsacks, backpacks, duffelbags, daypacks, camera cases, plastic packets, and one lathi. I suddenly start feeling good about the size of my luggage.
Check the weight on the jukebox weighing machine - 20 kg exact.


We grab the Garib Rath, the Air Deccan of the ground, in coach G10. 2 coaches away from Manmohan Singh. 4:30, on the dot, we're moving.
Almost immediately, we run into Col. Manoj Kumar (retd) of the J&K Light Infantry, who's now started a adventure-sports co. Chat about trekking, Ladakh, life in general, and finally he leaves us with advice to, if ever in trouble, get in touch with the current CO, give his name, and 'take whatever help we need.'

'Looks like Kerela, no?'

N makes a very professional jhalmuri, and we chat until night, on landrovers, 2-month breaks, extreme-condition trek plans, and preparation, while R sits with a look of steadily growing panic and scribbles away on a ever-growing list of stuff he needs to buy when we hit Delhi.


"Yaad hai last time kya hua tha?" says D. "M___ ne kya kiya?"
Apparently the last trip - Valley of Flowers, one that I missed - M was supposed to catch the train with the rest of the gang. He got late leaving, and for an hour, was on the phone with D, coordinating his position.
"Abhi main nikla hoon"
"Chembur naka cross kiya hoon"
"Sion mein hoon"
"Abe pahuch hi gaya hoon! Ruk!"
"Abe station ke bahar hi hoon!!"
... Train starts moving...
"Abe platform par aa raha hoon!! Chain khheech!!! Fine mein doonga!!"
Please note, this was the Rajdhani.
He misses the train, runs back, buys another ticket for a train leaving in an hour.
And then the conversation continues.
"Haan Kalyan cross kar raha hoon. Tum log kidhar ho?"
Finally D & M realized that being on the same track, he wasn't going to overtake us, so the rest of the journey D ate his share of the Rajdhani food that he'd paid for with the ticket.

And on that note, we go to sleep, resolutely ignoring the extraordinarily high levels of vestibular traffic. Half the train has apparently decided that the best way to treat their insomnia is to grab the largest, heaviest, noisiest piece of luggage they can lay their hands on, and take it for a walk from one end of the train to the other.

---

Coming Next: Delhi and the Street of Hotels.

Trainelogue

It doesn't matter how often I do it, but travelling on trains has a charm that's completely the spirit of travelling. Look at it any way you like, but airports. are. boring. There's simply too much stuff to worry about for you to relax.

Trains - are an escape. It's the feeling you get knowing that now that you're in, you've done all you can; responsibility is abdicated. It's not your headache anymore, and the next 12, 24, or 36 hours are a delicious anticipation, relaxing, snoozing, sleeping, reading, chatting time. Both coming and going, 'coz when you go, there's the holiday to look forward to; and when you return, it's the thought of turning your friends' faces green with envy.

Even looking at a screen evokes so much emotion, so many images; the station, the search for seats, what kind of people you'll be travelling with, chances of meeting single pretty young women (happens more often than you think!), watching the scenery, the quick hop-off and water-refill at the 2-minute stops at midnight, that ciggie at dawn on a completely unknown, middle-of-nowhere station listening to the birds, the smell of hot samosa and chai, the balancing act when you take a crap with the ground beneath your ass moving at 105 kmph, everything.

Destinations. Airports, everywhere, are airports. Air-conditioned, sterile, and filled only with 2 kinds of people - harassed personnel and harassed passengers, all thinking of what happens in the immediate future. Stations are so much more... relaxed. You see someone sleeping in an airport, and you're glad you aren't him; chances are, he's missing a flight. On a station, it's watching a slice of a more calm life. Wishing you could do that, too.

Stations have character. Sight, sound, smell, sensation. Sealdah is a termite nest smelling of fish. Step out of Howrah and watch the ferries loading up on the Hooghly, and slowly easing off. CSTM is like a gigantic roaring people-factory, processing migration by the kilotons. Karmali is a bird sanctuary. Madgaon is an afternoon siesta, or an island of dryness in an ocean of pouring rain. Bilaspur is an omelette-bread snack. Mughalsarai is a 5 a.m. chai. Ratnagiri is the sound of silence. Kalka is a dew-wet ice-cold stop to bring out your jackets. Shimla is brilliant, crystalline air and jagged mountains. Prayag is dusty heat and the smell of cows. Kalyan, Liluah, and Naini are wake-up alarms, prompting you to put on your shoes and pack up your luggage. And so on, so forth...

Trains have another huge advantage. They're a transport, and a hotel. So what if you can reach your destination in 1 hr 15 mins, when you need to immediately go to a hotel the minute you land. In trains, you can nod off and have the best sleep of your week.

Still the first choice... IR rocks!

Scenes and the City - Train Diary

the saga continues...

Are you lonely? Do you want some company? Some friends to keep you happy? Just go to Asangaon. Every Tom, Dick and Harry will be there. As instructed.

And you thought the King was dead. Photographic evidence that Elvis is alive and well, and apparently living in Borivali.

Gang members of today, a cross-section.
Big F. (as in, the ice-cream?)
Hawk (Hudson, -eye, or a GI Joe action figure?)
Frod (half a hobbit)
Aniks (an inside-out Skinner?)
Panzer (Auf wiedersehen, mein herr!)
Saiggy (better than capri, viri, libri, or aqui, I guess)
rushhh (Hi, Paula!)
Fighter (not Lover?)
M@K (makes it possible)
Venom (the Green Goblin will return in the next sequel)
Eros (Regal was running housefull)
Nemesis Harry (you mean Voldemort? Or puberty?)
Ohhh (Aahh. Ouchhh.)
KK (the result of outsourcing white-supremacist bigotry)
Lee (arrey bhai, kiski?)
Ladies and Gentlemen, the WTFs.

Scenes and the City, Episode Two

The train.

Ubiquitous, inescapable, inevitable, essential, infamous, embracing, pervasive... Mumbai is the local. The local is Mumbai. Books have been written on them, movies made, songs sung... as long as you're in Mumbai, you're in the train. One way or another. You'll travel in them, close deals, make plans, dream, sleep, make friends, meet that one person you've been searching for all your life, come face-to-face with your worst enemy, risk your life hanging literally by your fingertips, experience that sublime relaxation of the corner window facing direction in the shade... you'll go for treks, you'll make friends, cut vegetables, pray, sing, play music, listen to music, read, sleep, dream, sometimes even take a dump, argue, chat... you won't escape. Not them, never. They're as much your life as the clothes you wear.

It begins like a wildebeest migration on the Serengeti, when over a million bodies pass through one narrow pass every hour, not seeing, not thinking, just one giant mindless swarm, a herd, moving forward, upward, all conscious thought suspended in the great hivemind awareness of simple movement... Mumbai gets up and goes to it's trains.

Squeezed in like... like commuters in a Mumbai local (there really is no analogy that doesn't fall short of reality, except maybe neutron-star matter), you realize that the only difference between first and second class is that in first class, the sweat lets you identify the soap used in the morning. In second, you identify how many days ago any soap had been used.

The art of reading a newspaper in the crowd - how precisely to fold the broadsheet so that pages can be turned, quickly, efficiently, with minimal movement, minimal space occupation and minimal pokes in the eyes of fellow passengers. It's an art, it's the Local Origami that's far more challenging than it's namesake.

Time and place has no meaning in a local - all laws are suspended. So what if a few minutes a go, you had an air-conditioned office, a desk, everything. Now is when you have the Idea; and now is when you close the deal.


The ancient signboards have developed a code all of their own, one that baffles - hopelessly - the first time traveler. or even one who may have been on it for years. A code that changes with time and place, with train and direction. Green stripes or red stripes? After 7:30 or after 9? Am I carrying a large suitcase? How large is too large and has to go into th Luggage? Where is the Luggage? What is C - Churchgate, Kalyan, or Karjat? What's the difference between Neral and Nerul? Why do I see new stations every few months? What is 'return'? What is a 'starting' train, and why does it pull in pre-loaded with passengers already in the best seats? What is AD, A, K, C, T, TI, VA, V, B, and BY? How does a person balance 70 kgs on 4 fingers for 45 minutes?

Quoted from Local, by Amitava Ghosh, I think - Mumbai is the only city where you have three classes of friends - work, home, and train. People you meet only by a shared coincidence of time and destination, that grows into lifelong friendships - in the train only. Biggest example, the card clubs. 3-4 packs combined into one giant deck, a briefcase balanced carefully on 4 independent knees, and staying rock-solid despite crowds, the push and the shove, the sway and the jerk... one industrial-strength rubber band holding the loose cards down, one scorekeeper with a tiny notebook / scratchpad / ancient scroll keeping score of games that may have lasted for years, in 45-minute intervals each.

And in the late nights, when the last train leaves, and the coaches are empty, and the train is an oasis of light, silence and stability in the middle of roaring, windy, heaving darkness outside, the train is the witness to some of life's greatest aspirations - and also expressions of shattered dreams, broken hearts, dashed hopes, and the heart's last lonely cry in the end, poured out through a sketchpen onto the walls on the one thing that's remained constant through ll the upheavals. You'll find, scrawled on the walls - poetry, obscenity, cries for help, suicide notes, come-hither messages...

'I said... I will always love you, S... till the end of the world...'