Goa Expression

India, Day 31 – Delhi

Not really much to report at the moment. I’m on the Goa Express, on my way to Madgaon – Goa’s main rail hub.

This morning I went on the internet, had a late breakfast at Wimpy (not terribly healthy, but the spicy bean burger wasn’t bad), headed back to the hotel to pack and check out by noon. With three hours before my train was due, I took a cycle rickshaw down to Connaught Circus (haggling the lad down from 30 to ten rupees) then spent a couple of hours in Costa reading, writing and consuming a chicken tikka sandwich (quickly) and a caffe latte ‘massimo’ (slowly). At around two o’clock I walked back along the road to New Delhi Station.

Once at the station I looked at the departures board for my train. I couldn’t see it. I went up to the Foreign Tourist Bureau, but the man on reception told me to ask at the Enquiry desk. I queued for a few minutes and kept an eye on a plasma screen and eventually got fed up and went to look at the boards again. Still no sign. It was then, at around 2:25, that I realised I was at the wrong station – and I remembered that when the woman had sold me the ticket the previous day she had made a point of telling me it boarded at Hazrat Nizamuddin Station.

Nizamuddin is somewhat to the south of central Delhi – approximately comparable to the Qutb Minar, and it took half an hour or more to get to that place the day before yesterday. I went out to get an autorickshaw. As soon as I told a waiting driver that I wanted to go to Nizamuddin Station he guessed that I was heading to Goa. He told me it would be 150 rupees and proceeded to consult his colleagues for someone to actually take me. Once in an auto, this driver said the cost would be 200 rs. I didn’t argue – I deserved it, really.

We arrived at the station at ten to three, and I was on the train by five to.

This time I’m travelling 2A, which means there are only two berths per seat – upper and lower (as opposed to upper, middle and lower in 3A) – and everything seems a tiny bit better – nicer blankets, nicer curtains; I have the space to sit up in my bed, and there’s a small personal light.

In this compartment (although there aren’t any doors) there’s a young guy next to me, a middle aged couple (she a teacher, he a scientist) in the two places across the aisle who all got on in Delhi (before me, obviously) and two women who sound Eastern European who got on later (possibly in Agra). I chatted with the young chap, who’s a student in Pune and likes a lot of classic rock music – he mentioned The Who, Mark Knopfler and Ted ‘Nudgent’; he also likes – or used to like – Metallica.

I got a meal this time. I asked for the ‘non-veg’ option. This was a mistake. I received a foil tray containing a piece of what looked, from the shape of it, chicken in a curry sauce; there were also four nans and a pot of yogurt. To eat this meal, a tiny plastic spoon was provided. I ate the nans and the curry sauce, but I had no idea how I was supposed to tackle the chicken, so I left it.

Just before dinner arrived, the middle-aged couple challenged me to a trackword game. A four by four grid of random letters with eight vowels and eight consonants is chosen; you then have an amount of time to find as many words as you can. When I started I didn’t catch that only words with five or more letters were allowed, so my list of about thirty was instantly reduced to a handful. After that, any words found by two or more players are crossed off. My score on the first game was 2. I lost. On the second – for which I chose the letters (and was assisted by Dawnthief) I ended up with seven words – and was the winner. Go me (to Go … a).