A lot less noise tonight and we sleep rather better. D managed to avoid England's catastrophic T20 collapse in Bangalore. Put Sir Geoffrey Boycott in charge. Then we would know who to blame. We rouse ourselves and check out. This includes the mandatory wait as an underling is sent to check that we haven't stolen the furniture. Bill settled , the walk to the station for our 7.02 train is next. It is a very misty morning and quite cool. At the station there is no information about our train at all. We are catching the Shatabdi, one of the more prestigious trains, so D guesses Platform 1 at the far side of the station. Wrong guess. A man coming out of the stationmaster's office directs us to Platform 2. R is not happy about having retrace our steps up and across the footbridge.
There is already a train in P2 but it is not ours. It is heading up country to Bolangir and departs promptly at 6.45, apparently catching out several would be travellers who pursue it down the platform. The information boards continue to display details of the departed train and our departure time is approaching. Eventually the PA announces train 12278 Howrah Shatabdi, platform 2. But where will our coach be? The indicators stay blank. Bhubaneswar has form for this and we have almost been caught out a couple of times. An online oracle is consulted and a decision made. We will head toward the back of the train and find a spot where, as if by magic, the indicator lights up to show E1, just where we need to be. A headlight appears through the murk and the train pulls up. The indicator is wrong by a couple of coach lengths but we can live with that.
We are travelling Executive class which means air conditioning, comfy reclining seats, decent legroom, generous luggage space and an endless parade of staff, each carrying out a different task. Some oddity in the computerised booking system means that we have a pair of seats in the forward facing half of the coach, surrounded by empty seats while everbody else is crowded together in the other half. Our first visitor is a man with a grimy rag and a bucket of disinfectant who gives our tray tables a wipe. Next is the man who hands out the bottles of water, followed by the man who takes our food order. On certain trains, including this one, meals are included in the fare. We have learned that opting for non-veg gets us a passable omelet. Veg chosers get a couple of greasy rissole type things. Our next visitor is the TTE, a cheery sort of chap, who has no interest in our passports. He is closely followed by the man with the aerosol spray that makes everybody cough.
Female staff seem to be a bit of a rarity on IR. D has read about a lady driver on the Mumbai suburban lines, and we once saw a lady TTE down in the south but we cannot recall any female catering or cleaning. R thinks that this explains why trains are always so grubby. One quite common job for women on the railway is level crossing keeper. Apparently these jobs often go to the widows of track workers killed on duty. Actually we have seen an all female track repair gang on our travels.
Breakfast gets delivered to our seats and consists of a carton of mango juice, a bowl of cornflakes, a banana, a foil container containing an omelet, a few chips and some peas, a paper packet with two slices of bread and sachets of butter, jam and tomato ketchup. We know what to do. Ignore the cornflakes because you only get hot milk for them and that really is disgusting, butter the two slices of bread, place the omelet between them and eat as a sandwich. Follow up with chips and/ or peas according to personal preference. Eat banana now or later. We don't need a huge breakfast today as we will get fed again before Howrah. A teacup and teamaking kit are delivered separately, followed by a flask of hot water so we can have our black tea.
Shatabdis get precedence over other trains so we don't have too much stop start to our progress although we are hardly dashing along. But better to be going this way than t'other. The southbound line appears to be gridlocked with a train standing at every section signal. Most are freight trains, mainly coal, but there are few passenger trains standing as well. As is the custom in India large numbers of passengers have climbed down on to the track and are milling about. This section is mainly double track and is sorely in need of quadrupling to cope with traffic. On the southbound side there are long sections of a newly laid relief line, almost complete but with a few very short gaps which render it unusable. It was just like that twelve months ago.
At the halfway stage we are about 25 minutes late so there is work to do if our driver is to salvage the honour of Indian Railways. Vendors are not permitted on Shatabdis and the Exec class passengers are rather a reserved bunch so we rely on the view out of the window to keep us amused. The mist is rather patchy and the haze abates the full force of the sun. The countryside is very flat, mainly rice paddies, but with a few small wooded areas. Every so often there is a ramshackle factory of some sort. The telegraph poles and boundary markers provide perches for countless birds.
The catering staff decide that it is time for lunch at 10.45 and deliver a tray with a packet containing two bread sticks and a butter "chiplet". Have you ever tried to butter a breadstick? Without cutlery? The chap who brings the trays has 'Doon's' embroidered on the back of his shirt. R wants to know what happened to the Ups (Scottish joke). Another bloke brings bowls containg a spoon and a warm orange liquid of indeterminate flavour. Soup on a shoogly train is one of R's recurring nightmares and sure enough the driver notches things up, creating a gentle sway in our coach. His efforts recoup a few minutes and we are only 15 down departing Kharagpur, our final stop before Howrah. The soup was a false alarm as the rest of lunch does not put in an appearance.
It eventually appears 90 minutes after the soup. We suspect that it was loaded onto the train at Kharagpur. It's pretty good. Chicken curry, rice, daal, curd and an enormous chapatti. Once again we congratulate ourselves on choosing non- veg. The option is rubbery railway paneer. The whole thing is topped off with a tub of ice cream. This has a price stamped on it. West Bengal Rs 10 . Rest of India Rs15. Is ice cream subsidised in WB? By the time lunch is cleared and we have filled in the inevitable customer satisfaction form we are only about 30km from Howrah and right back on schedule. There is some soft timetabling on this line. Arrival is a mere 3 minutes late. Almost the perfect train journey and there is lots more rail related fun to come today.
There is a rather sweaty sojurn in the Howrah prepaid taxi queue where we talk to a man who has sent his wife to do the queuing. When we get to the counter and pay for our trip to Sealdah, the other big Kolkata railway station, we realise how much of a bandit the man outside the Fairlawn really is. Our driver takes neither prisoners nor a route that we recognise but gets us there PDQ. We give him a small tip and he seems delighted. The porters must have heard the "I have a strong wife" line as they don't even crack a smile. We walk into the station and are accosted by a policeman who wants to know where we are going. We want the left luggage office but are savvy enough to know that this is called a Clock Room on Indian Railways. "Yes sir. This way" He points the Cloakroom out to us but clearly wants to practice his English so we chat for a while. The Cloakroom here at Sealdah is surprisingly quiet for a major station We are old hands at using these places and make sure that our bags are locked before we present them at the counter. There is a bit of form filling and we are free!
But what to do? D has not planned anything for today as he assumed 1) that the train to Howrah would be at least an hour late 2) that the transfer between stations would be fraught with difficulty and take a couple of hours. This would just about leave time for dinner before queuing at the Cloakroom. We have a fall back position in Kolkata which is to take a tram ride or two. Finding a way out of Sealdah on foot is a bit of a challenge but we rise to it. We find a tram stop marker just to the north of the station but there are two sets of continuous railings between it and the tram lines. Walking on we get to a junction where there is a gap in the railings just as a tram appears. Feeling a little vulnerable we stand out in the traffic and put our arms out. The tram stops and we climb on. There are no other passengers. The destination board on the front is in Bengali so we have no idea where we are going until the conductor tells us it is Esplanade (trans. Urine Central). At least we know where that is.
The tram heads south and picks up a few people at a stop on the other side of Sealdah Station before heading south for half a mile. The route then turns west along the splendidly named Lenin Sarani which is a one way street eastbound. Nothing has been done to mitigate this for trams so progress is faltering. D watches the fun over the driver's shoulder. We jump off just before Esplanade and explore some of the lanes just off Chowringee. These are almost traffic free and contain dozens of camera shops. We slowly work our way south to Park Street where we partake of refreshment. Not wishing to get utterly gassed we take a further promenade and finally discover a few of the Christmas lights that we looked for last week. We manage to make a dinner of samosas, pakoras and a plate of ice cream last a couple of hours in a very pleasant and tolerant restaurant called Kwality. Finally it is time to head back to the station so we walk down Park Street to where we can catch a tram up to Sealdah. The only flaw with this plan is a total absence of nortbound trams. Plenty going south, presumably to bed at Gariahat depot. In the end we take a taxi. We recover our bags and stroll round to Platform 9B just as the coaches for the Darjeeling Mail are being shunted in. Perfect timing.
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