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Writer's picturePreeti Saldanha

The Train Ride to Goa

I have never been on an Indian train and this was definitely a culture shock for Aunty P. Was not my 5 star train in case you were wondering even though I was told it would be a sleeper car with beds and AC. In my head, I was picturing a nice soft bed with linens and a nice pillow. The first thing that shocked me was that people here had never used an escalator and were literally screaming and refusing to go down it. There was quite a backup for the escalator due to the scene people were causing. Sonali told me it's since people in small towns had never been exposed to it. The second thing that shocked me was the state of the train. I was expecting it to look like a bed at least but instead it looked like a hard leather bench. The worst part was that there were 3 leather benches stacked on top of each other. The train was empty since we were the first stop so we had to wait for the next few stops to find out who would be sleeping on the topmost bunk. We didn't end up waiting since we boarded at 10pm and we're both exhausted and sick so we put down the bunks and made our beds. The lights on the train were still on and people kept moving around talking very loudly. About around 11pm the train was full and people started settling in. Sonali looked over to my bunk and told me to put my eye mask on and go to sleep. The people next to me were still talking and watching reels without headphones so I took a Nyquil and called it a night.



The train was very shaky and I felt nauseous throughout the whole night. I woke a few times disoriented and shaken awake. My cousins were roasting me about how if I was traumatized by the train, wait til I see the bathroom. The bathroom was Indian style aka a hole but I have used the hole one too many times especially as a kid. Let me tell you I was terrified of it as a kid and would rather hold my pee for 10 hours. The train we were on was an express train so it was a couple hours faster than the normal ones. I awoke at around 5:30 am since someone had set an alarm and was clearly not disturbed by it as they took forever to turn it off. At around 7:30a m we finally reached GOA and I was so nauseous that at one point I was hanging out of the train bent over. But hey I survived the train!



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