Well Hello friends,
It took me and Laura all of ten minutes to get ripped off for the first time in this beautiful new country. After crossing the border from Nepal and then selecting a nice looking bus for a three-hour ride to Gorakhpur, where we planned to catch a night train to Varanasi, the helpful bus tout told us that we couldn't buy a train ticket in Gorakhpur cause the office would be closed by the time we got to the train station.
So, I was shown across the street to a 'travel office', where I climbed some stairs and definitely ended up in some guy's bedroom where he had a computer and some forms from a train station. Thinking we might be getting hosed, but not wanting to chance missing the night train, I forked over 800 rupees (about 20 bucks) for two train tickets, grabbed the sheet that he gave me in return, and ran back out to catch the bus which was leaving in two minutes.
Needless to say, upon arrival in Gorakhpur, the ticket office was open all night, and our 'ticket' was a useless scrap of paper. Lesson learned...hopefully. We ended up missing the night train anyways cause we were at the wrong end of the platform, but after a pleasant night in our first Indian train station, caught a morning train to Varanasi, the ancient holy Hindu city, on the Ganges River.
Now the Ganges River isn't the cleanest river in the world. During a morning boat ride, our boat drive happily pointed out dead human bodies floating down the river. Not two seconds later, he proceeded to take his hand a scoop out a handful of scum-covered water, and drink deeply. We both definitely almost gagged.
We spent a few days exploring the city, amusing ourselves with ridiculous cows and mangy dog situations. So far the street food hasn't struck any nasty blows and we're both loving this country.
A quick Indian train story. We left Varanasi yesterday and grabbed a train down to Satna to check out some temples and sights before heading back up North to Agra and the Taj. We were in a second class sleeper which is pretty comfortable by Indian train standards, as far as I can gather. In our little cubicle were six chinese tourists who made sure that everyone was in their appropriate seat and kicked out the Indian dude who wasn't in the right section. After 7 hours on the train, a nice Indian man told us that our stop would be the one after the one coming up. When the train stopped, this man then told us that this was our stop, saying the seemingly magic word 'Satna'. As soon as the Chinese heard this, they went crazy, grabbing their luggage with wheels and trying to force their way off the train. Appparantly we had five minutes to get off the train which shouldn't have been a problem...except that we were in India. Seeing that me and Laura were about to give up our seats, about three guys (who hadn't paid for seats) tried to grab our two seats, keeping Laura from being able to get up. In the commotion, she lost one of her shoes, while I was trying to get our backpacks from overhead.
Now we were stuck in the middle of the train section, people were forcing their way onto the train, we couldn't get off, and we were down one shoe. Eventually, we found the shoe, but our way off the train was blocked with a pile of people forcing their way on. We turned around and tried the other way, but no luck, same story. It seemed to me the only option was to go out a window, but the people who had taken our recently vacated seats did not seem to understand my charades (I suck at this game) and wouldn't get out of the way for me to get out of the window. The entire time, people are yelling that we have to get off the train cause it's about to leave. If it did leave, then we'd end up who knows where in the middle of the night. Finally, Laura managed to bodychek a few ladies out of the way and we forced our way to the end of the carriage and off the train, about a minute before it did in fact leave the station. WE'll figure these trains out eventually. Later,
Andrew and Laura
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