Upon our arrival, India gave us (initially) a warm welcome.

We arrived in Jaipur from London (via Mumbai) and everything was glorious. We were exhausted and we still had a 12 hour overnight train from Jaipur to the race’s starting line in Jaisalmer, but we had a few tasty beers on a rooftop bar overlooking Jaipur, a breathtaking sun set that painted almost the entire sky and a beautiful fireworks display a bit later for “Rajasthan Festival”. “Good omens”, we thought. Good omens.

However, as we finished our beer and paid the check, we realized there were only fifteen minutes until our overnight train left for Jaisalmer. We had to be in Jaisalmer the next day to learn how to drive our rickshaw so we could start the 3,000 kilometer race the following morning.

That would give us an afternoon to both (a) learn how to drive a rickshaw and (b) find a good mechanic to fix things like breaks, engine, hoses, etc and to make the sure horn was loud. That was the plan.

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

We hurried down to the street, grabbed a taxi and told the driver: “Ghandhinagar Train Station. Fast. Go!”

Spurned on by our manic behavior, the driver made the ten-minute journey in about three minutes flat. Impressed by our good fortune, we doubled his fare (from $0.75 to $1.50). When we handed him the money, he had a blank expression on his face that was either related to our tip or the fact that we (absurdly) thought we would actually be late for our train.

Two hours later, we were still waiting on Platform 2 in Jaipur’s Ghandhinagar Train Station when our 11:11pm train slowly arrived at about 1:00am in the morning.

By slowly, I mean the train pulled in at an almost imperceptible speed (you had to focus your eyes to see whether it was actually moving or not). Why so slow? Because the train was almost a half-mile long. And it was packed. We counted at least twenty three train cars that were at least 100 feet long each. In total, there was more than 2,300 feet of train. It required monumental dexterity on behalf of the conductor to slow the beast’s momentum down from its traveling velocity and then get it to stop at the right place along the platform.

Excited by the fact that our train had actually arrived, exhausted beyond repair and beyond excited to lay down and (finally) sleep in our sleeper births, we checked our tickets to see which car and which seats we had… 1A, seats “WL 14” and “WL 15”.

“Strange seat numbers”, we thought, but whatever. This is India. Things work differently. Roll with it.

When we found a conductor to show us where our births were, he looked at our tickets, rolled his head side to side and said, “No. These tickets are not valid.”

“Yeah. Look. Here. We have seats WL 14 and WL 15 in coach 1A.”

He rolled his head side to side again and said, “You are “Wait List” numbers 14 and 15 in class 1A.” He waved away at our tickets in disgust. “Your tickets are not confirmed. They have been automatically cancelled for full refund.”

“We must be on this train to Jaisalmer. We are about to enter a 3,000 kilometer race in 36 hours and we don’t even know yet how to drive the vehicle we’re supposed to be racing!”

“No.”

There was a lot of back and forth discussion and “talk to that guy”, but we were allowed to remain on the train until the next station (which was Jaipur Main Station only 6 kilometers down the track on the other side of town).

The conductor (and some other random guy who may or may not have been a train employee), told us, “When train stop Jaipur Main Station, go ticket office and buy ticket.”

“Will you wait for me?”

He rolled his head back and forth. “Yes.”

When we arrived at Jaipur station (a mere 6 kilometers from where we got on the train at Jaipur Ghandhinagar Station), I had ten minutes to buy us new tickets before the train left. I grabbed my backpack with my phone and passport and told Eric to stay on the train. “If the train takes off before I get back, I’ll see you in Jaisalmer.”

Exhausted, delirious and without any other alternative, this seemed like a good plan.

I ran off the train, up some stairs, across a walkway, back down some stairs, across the train station to the ticket office. “I need two tickets to Jaisalmer.”

“No.”

“No. Seriously, I need two tickets to the train on platform 5 for Jaisalmer. My friend is on the train with my bag. I need two tickets.”

“This is advance bookings only. For general tickets, go to the ticket office along the platform.”

I ran and found a stationmaster who told me to keep going down the platform. The only thing I could find was an “Assistance Desk”. The woman behind the “Assistance Desk” told me to go back to the first guy. I ran back to the first guy who refused to talk me. I then went back to the stationmaster who told me again to keep going further down the platform.

I was out of time. I decided just to get back on the train and pay/bribe the conductor all the money I had for two tickets to Jaisalmer. We had to get to Jaisalmer.

I sprinted back up the stairs, across the walkway and back down the stairs. As I ran down the stairs, I saw the train pulling away from the platform. Holy shit!

I ran down the stairs and I was about to jump onto to the last car of the moving train, when I saw Eric standing on the platform with our bags. “I got kicked off the train.”

Oh man. We are screwed…

It was now 1:45am and, after having landed in Jaipur at 4:00pm (almost 10 hours earlier), we had made it from one end of Jaipur… to the other end of Jaipur.

Our only known means of getting to Jaisalmer disappeared slowly (very slowly) down the track.

Thankfully, when I found Eric on the platform, he had been speaking to a small congress of about 3 or 4 Indian men (plus several observers more or less circled around him), intrigued by our plight and seemingly interested in trying to help.

One of the Indian men was a young dude finishing his civil engineering degree and he couldn’t have been more helpful. Between 1:45am and 2:15am, he spent 30 minutes with us making sure we had train tickets to Jodhpur (half way to Jaisalmer) and at least some kind of plan on how to get from Jodhpur to our actual destination of Jaisalmer.

I offered to give him some money for his time and he pushed it away, almost insulted. He simply wanted to help us.

When the train to Jodhpur (our last hope) arrived, it kind of came to a stop for a brief moment, but then it started moving again. It was leaving without us!

We ran to the nearest door, Eric jumped up onto the train and sat down on the last available seat in that compartment. I threw my bag up onto the floor of the moving train and crawled up the little ladder into the car. Meanwhile, because the compartment was so packed and people were desperate for seats, some man sat on Eric’s lap. Eric promptly stood up, “We gotta find another car.”

We jumped down from that car, ran along the platform and jumped up into the moving car ahead, which suspiciously had more space. It had no free seats, mind you, but at least it had space to either stand or sit on top of your luggage.

It was 3:00am, but at least we had secured passage half way to our destination. We were back in it. Sort of.

Exhaustion set in. Sitting on our bags for a six hour, overnight train ride wasn’t going to work, so we decided to lie down on the dirty floor of the compartment and sleep, which was fine except: (a) there were about eight other people in our compartment, (b) the lights in the compartment were on full blaze and they were as bright as the sun and (c) the guy driving the train (one car in front of us) blasted his horn every five seconds.

That isn’t an exaggeration. Every five seconds, he leaned on his horn with ‘great vengeance and furious anger’ to make sure the entire province of Rajasthan could hear our train coming at all times. Sometimes he laid on it for 20-30 seconds in one go. I assume this was to scare the crap out of anything that might be lurking on the track ahead of us during the night. However, the whole thing felt more like being waterboarded than riding on a sleeper train.

To be fair, there was an interesting cast of characters that seemed to appear (and then mysteriously disappear) at various stops along the way, including a few Gandhi-look-a-likes (white flowing robes, intense sense of inner peace) who for sure know how to levitate and bend things with their minds (photo 1 above).

Eventually (after another lengthy leg of the journey across desert from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer), we arrived in the beautiful northwestern city of Jaisalmer (the “Golden City”). In the “Golden City”, there were a few signs in the streets of Rajasthan Festival (photo 2 above) and the little restaurant at the top of our hotel that served us dinner had amazing views of the monumental Jaisalmer Fort (photo 3 above).

Next up, the race…

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Matt Dunn and http://www.roguenaan.com, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.