Glorious Train Travels

This morning I went to Dehradun Railway Station to pick up my wife who was returning after a month-long holiday. She started from Kerala on Tuesday afternoon and reached Delhi yesterday evening, about four and half hours late from the scheduled time. So she missed the janashatabdi train for which she was booked and had to wait till about 10 O'clock night to get the next train - A four and half hours delay of a train causing a total delay of more than 10 hours. A total time of about 68 hours. Bravo!!!

Hats off to her for managing to take an auto in between, from Delhi Nizamuddin station to Old Delhi station. Hats off to her again for being able – almost immediately after reaching home – to   laugh and joke and be her usual jovial self, and to talk to several people connected with school about tomorrow when the school reopens after the holidays.

I do not like travelling by train. A comfortable travel is a luxury I like to have. I do not enjoy sleeping particularly in the middle birth of a three tier sleeper coach. Not that I enjoy sleeping in the upper birth or sitting in the lower birth when someone is sleeping in the middle birth. Not even ardent practitioners of yoga would fancy these, I suppose.

Then there are problems with the compartments, toilets etc. Halfway through the journey there will be no water in wash basin or toilets. Short travels of few hours by chair cars are slightly better.

More striking fact is that the same kind of problems, the same kind of compartments etc. all existed even 50 years back when I used to travel Palakkad to Mumbai (Olavakkode to Bombay V.T). Those days the train carrying us from Olavakkode will go via Arkkonam to Chennai (Madras Central). Our compartment which is going to Bombay will be detached at Arkkonam. Usually we reach Arkkonam early morning. The train going to Bombay from Madras will reach Arkkonam sometime in the afternoon and our compartment will be attached to that.

In between, the compartment will have been shunted from place to place in Arkkonam station. Usually we don’t experience all those shunting because most of us  would go out to town and have breakfast. After our compartment is coupled to the Bombay-bound train, the longer part of the journey starts and it used to take anything between 20 to 25 hours. One of the best things during those travels was the food in railways stalls used to be excellent!

Then the shared taxis and luxury buses started between Mumbai and Mangalore, and I started using that route most of the time. Later, Konkan railway started and that reduced the travel time considerably, and then the computers came and reduced the reservation problems. Sitting in our office or drawing room, we can now track any train.

But I have not seen much improvement in the within-the-train conditions. May be they are better in Rajdhanis and Shatabdis and elite trains, but the conditions in the normal trains seems to be having not much improvement.

So, to spend three days travelling by train and be your normal self at the end of that journey is a great feat indeed!