A tale of a few rail journies

It’s difficult to ignore the presence of long distance trains when you live the life of nomad. I mean in the last 7 years even a person like me have become the revenue contributor to the railways in their overall earning. I mean why the heck I study some 1400-1600 km away from my home as well why my sister lives some 2500km from my native home. Now because of such factors I have travelled more than 16000km in last one year!!!

Well train journeys are never like a bed of roses, I mean sometime you face some tough questions like survival of fittest and survival of quickest to get the tickets. I mean because of some astronomical problem in my janampatri it rarely happen that I got my ticket confirmed and even if I get it somehow it becomes mandatory to share it with someone else. How great is it x-(
So post examinations, it became urgent need of my life to travel to Delhi from Mumbai. Thanks to my father who has booked tickets some 2-3 months in advance ( damn my stars, I got RAC).  but as I have mentioned earlier, my stars once again wanted to play “snake n ladder” with me and look they even cheated with me, they only provided 2 ladders and many snakes. In short I was once again screwed in the factor known as luck.

I mean why the heck Gujjars of Rajasthan chose Mumbai-Delhi train tracks for their dharna. Couldn’t they pick the parallel track but no, they only picked that track and hence I was once again ready with one more outstanding train journey.

Let me first introduce the train which I selected for travelling. I ( or rather say my father) booked my ticket in Gareeb Rath. It was the brainchild of Mr. Lalu Yadav when he proudly said that “hamar desh ka garib log bhi ab aeer kanditionar mai travel kar sakega. Isiliye hum yeh train chalvaye hai”. But as per my research the word Gareeb  associated with this is just like naming a blind person “Nayan-sukh”. How irony!!! I mean it is my 10-11^th journey in this train but I am yet to meet any gareeb in this train. All I find is people carrying luggage in 1:3 ratio ( 1 person carrying 3 bags, it means if a family of 4 is travelling 12 bags will be there) and if you are lucky you will even find a person having a bag with a label of some good flights stick to it. I know India is full up of hypocrite people, me being one of them. ;) no shame at all.

Well coming back to the journey, a day before my father called me and informed me about  the gujjar thing. I was shocked because exactly 2.5 years back I was their victim in the same way. Well this time Government did little good and they divert the path to some different route which only means a delay of some 8-10 hours in journey.

Well 2.5 years back when Gujjars did the same drama , I’d booked the same train but from Delhi to Mumbai at that time along with my buddy Sisaudia ( we have travelled together in our whole engineering course and by god ki kasam we both understand the pain of travelling on waiting ticket). Well at that time the railway did not take chances and cancelled the gareeb rath. It meant we had to travel in some other train and that’s too without confirm ticket ( as always). That was the most horrible journey of our lives because we travelled those 26 hours at the door step ( yeah place near to toilets .yuck)

Remembering about my other train journeys, I have once enjoyed my train journey in Jab-We-Met style. No I didn’t meet any bubbly girl like kareena kapoor but I missed my train at Delhi and forced my driver to drive to next station , which was Faridabad. For train it was only 35 minute journey but for a vehicle like car that’s too in a Delhi traffic condition it was minimum 1 hour journey. Though my driver tried his best and we reached Faridabad in 40 minutes plain but that effort was useless. Hence I ordered him to drive to Mathura which was next stop for train. Now train take almost 2:30 hours from Faridabad to Mathura. And considering Traffic condition and TATA Indigo ( we had this car at that time)’s engine capacity the task was still impossible because it takes almost 4 hours on road (that’s  too when  someone maintains the average of 85-90 KmPH).

I learnt a first lesson of management there, I kept on motivating my driver. Made his life miserable, which resulted he drove on highest speed possible and maintained the average of some 120-125 Kmph. Because of his brilliant efforts we were in the boundary of Mathura within 2:15 hours. It means we still had a chance. But then I asked the direction of station from a person strolling on the road and he guided me to the station. Yes you figured it right, My astronomical stars yet to played a big game with me. Actually that person guided me to Krishna JanamBhumi temple ( most of the people who comes to Mathura visit here, in fact people those who come to Mathura come only to visit Janambhumi temple) which is on opposite direction of the railway station. My driver sensed the wrong direction in 2-3 minutes and he again confirmed from someone else. This time we got the correct direction and reached to station with 2:27 minutes. But still I missed that train :P

Actually whatever time I was calculating, I was considering the travel time from Delhi to that point. Here I forgot that I was already 15 minute delayed when I reached Delhi railway station. Well this time I told my driver that I’d sat in the train ( just to get rid from him) and I immediately booked a ticket for the train in the night.

These are the some of my historical train journeys. But trust me I have even travelled in worst conditions than these. Still I like to travel in the train because i love to meet new people, I love to chat with them.

P.S.  I am still in train which is halting at Bhopal Railway station for the last 1 hour, but because of internet unavailability I will update it later. 

P.P.S. Now I’ve reached home after a whopping journey of 32 hours x-( what a great start to celebrate my vacations.