trains...

1/2/13 - 13:10 - varanasi, india

it all started when lisa and i innocently pre-booked some trains for a quick adventure in north india. i booked 4 train trips...a total of 42 hours on trains...and it cost me $20. bargain, i thought, as i gave myself a high-five for being so thrifty. i should have known better.

we had hoped to book some of the higher class trains, but found out quickly that all 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd class services were fully booked.  apparently every 12 years in a small town outside of varanasi there is what our lonely planet described as “the world’s largest human gathering.”  70 million Hindus gather. in one place. at one time. in jan/feb 2013. excellent. this will all make for a great story when it’s over.

so, along with 70 million of our closest friends, lisa and i boarded a train in delhi and headed for varanasi.

i will never be able to do this experience justice with the written word. how does one use words to paint a picture of an odour? the carriage we boarded smelled, in equal parts, like urine and unhappiness. i immediately instructed my bladder and bowels that they were to be non-operational for the proceeding 19 hours. they lasted 7 hours before they realised there was 2 of them and only 1 of me. in short, a revolution was staged. i fought well, but i lost soundly to the demands of my bladder. what followed is something i hope to be able to work through in therapy and share with you all at a later date. moving train...small hole in the ground...and the smell...urine and unhappiness were on steroids in there. i really can’t talk about this.

as the sun set, we prepared ourselves for bedtime in our sleeper class train (ironically titled as it turns out). the temperature dropped about 30 degrees. all the indians seemed to know this would happen and pulled out big fluffy blankets. i had a sheet. my feet quickly went numb, and remained that way for the next 12 hours. it was a truly horrific night. at one point the smell inside the carriage got overtaken by a stronger smell outside...as if that was even possible! i closed my eyes and tried to breathe slowly through my mouth using my sheet as a filter. useless. i noticed that my cheeks were damp. the smell was so bad it had made my eyes water. IT MADE MY EYES WATER!!!

i was looking forward to this train trip...sure that it would make for a funny story. the lesson i have learned is that i am probably getting too old to do things just because they’ll be funny one day. having said that, i board my next train in 6 hours and head for agra (12 hour journey)...and lisa and i found out a few days ago that they have only booked one seat for us...so that should be funny...right?

i hope the taj mahal is worth it.

22/1/13 - 1:45pm - Chennai, India

on my flight from brisbane to singapore 3 weeks ago i wanted to punch a small child in the face and jab it with a horse tranquiliser. too harsh? maybe a mini-horse tranquiliser...a shetland pony tranqu perhaps. i’m terrible at judging the ages of people so i’m going to go ahead and call the screaming offender a baby...maybe it was 1 year old...2 years old? i should call it a she really. let’s say she was 18 months old. i didn’t like the kid. maybe she was teething, i’m told that hurts quite a bit. or maybe she had an ear infection (this suggestion is courtesy of my older sister who has thankfully provided my family tree with the grandchildren). i prefer to simply think of the screamer as a brat...it makes it easier for me to hate her screaming guts (and it makes my shetland pony tranqu fantasies seem not so inappropriate...right?)

she didn’t scream for the entire 8 hour flight. there were periods of quiet, although i can only imagine that these occurred because her parents were packing some pony tranqu of their own.  i looked forward to venturing out of my seat to the toilet to escape the noise...which is disturbing to me. nobody should enjoy going to the toilet on a plane. without fail there are indistinguishable wet patches on the ground and they ask you to wipe out the basin after you’ve washed your hands...this is weird and disgusting and i don’t understand it at all.

towards the end of my flight i saw something quite lovely happen. there was a family of four sitting in front of the screamer. every time she worked up the energy for another bout of torture, the mum and daughter in front of her would pick up a bunch of stuffed toys and begin doing a puppet show. i’m not sure how they happened upon so many stuffed monkeys...but i am glad for their strange obsession. sometimes the screamer just kept screaming. sometimes she grabbed a fistful of monkeys and threw them angrily to the ground. then sometimes the smiling, performing mother-daughter combo had a breakthrough and the screamer would chuckle.

and so on and on it went. scream. puppets. scream. stolen monkeys. scream. quiet chuckle. 3 second silence...bliss.

i loved that mother and daughter. so gracious and kind as they busied themselves trying to make the flight more peaceful for us all. unfortunately, they didn’t rub off on me...i pretty much hated the baby til the bitter end. all i could do was sit back and smile and wish to one day be a much kinder person.

step one: buy some monkeys.