It’s not easy getting from Ranthambhore to Varnasi, my next stop. It’s a 19 hour train ride if all goes well, but this is India, and all never goes even remotely well.
It was, of course, a classical Indian Cluster F#©k. I scoped out the platform signs and found the place my carriage would stop so all I had to do was get on and sit down. The train was 45 minutes late (of course). When it stopped, it was instantly obvious that they had put up all the signs backwards so my carriage was all the way at the other end of the platform. I hot footed it down that way (literally hot footed because it was 108 F) but since the train was late, they only stopped for 2 minutes instead of the 10 they were supposed to so I wound up having to hop on the moving train with my stuff into a 3rd class “cattle car” and stand in the doorway for 45 minutes until we got to the next station where I could hop out and get on down to my 1st class carriage. The next station didn’t have a platform long enough for the whole train so I had to shuffle down the rail bed to find my car. When I finally got to where I was supposed to be (in blessed AC), there was an Indian family of 4 in my berth! They very graciously “allowed" me to sit with them until the conductor finally shooed them off an hour later. By the end of the journey, we were over 3 hours late getting into Varanasi. I wish I could say tht this was my worst train experience in India, but no…. not even close.
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