“India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.” American historian Will Durant
In a hectic first week we had travelled south and west of Delhi and enjoyed the Golden Triangle through Jaipur and Agra and now for week two we were heading north towards the Himalayas.
This inevitably meant another early pre-dawn start, we were catching the express train to Amritsar, a scheduled seven hour journey.
We were booked and ticketed on the Shatabdi Express, excellent fast air-conditioned daytime trains running at up to ninety miles an hour for some parts of the journey. Shatabdi is Hindi for century as the first of these trains were introduced in 1988 to mark the centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth. The first Prime Minister of independent, post colonial India.
We were moving two hundred and eighty miles north on a train of twenty passenger coaches. The longest train in India is twenty-two coaches and requires a platform length of a third of a mile. A little bit of trivia for you now – the only platform in the UK that can accommodate a twenty-two coach train without it hanging over both ends is in the city of Gloucester.
As it happens, in a list of longest railway station platforms in the World, India has nine out of the top ten, the longest is Hubali Junction Railway Station in Kamataka in Southern India which is close on to a mile long.
Standard UK trains are a maximum of twelve coaches. The longest passenger train ever was ‘The Ghan’ in Australia, which ran from Adelaide to Darwin and had had forty-four coaches. If you are in the wrong place when that beast pulls in to the station then you are going to need running shoes, that platform would also need to be almost a mile long!
The Shatabdi Express includes food and drink and there is a regular supply of water, tea and biscuits and airline style food. A lot of people turned down the food, wary of dreaded Delhi Belly but I tucked in and enjoyed it, especially the lamb curry and had no bother at all. It was a great deal better than Virgin Airlines on board catering I can tell you. India Railways move seventy million passengers a day and Virgin airlines only twelve thousand so you would think that they could do better.
The railway directly employs 1.2 million people but I suspect that it supports a much larger employment economy than that. Station porters compete for business. Platform vendors and countless others making a living off the railway even those who pick through track-side litter.
In travel vendors pass unsuccessfully several times through the coaches, I doubt that they are directly employed, my guess is that they are licenced operators who have paid for the privilege of a concession. They return every few minutes in the hope that someone has turned down the meal and will have a Snickers Bar instead or maybe hoping that they have just changed their mind and turn a no thank you into a yes please.
It is billed as an express train but the average speed across the journey is only forty miles an hour, it stops six times and speed in and out of cities and towns is soporific. It took even longer today as it was delayed by a farmers protest blocking the line ahead. Indian farmers demand higher prices for their products and less environmental demands. They have copied French farmer tactics to make their point.
Kim used the time to make a new friend…
So, we arrived in Amritsar a few minutes late, gave our uneaten breakfast boxes away to the sleeping beggars, met the coach driver and his assistant and drove to the hotel. A nice hotel Kim reminds me but I remember little about it, I was ready for a Kingfisher beer so I obtained directions to a nearby liquor store and made the appropriate purchases.
Another good day. I had enjoyed it. We had enjoyed it. More curry for dinner.
Have Bag, Will Travel 