Trains, busses, and travel in India.

Before I begin, I would like to mention Pam Christensen. For those of you that knew her, you undoubtedly remember what a wonderful person she was. The community of Clear Creek has been struck by tragedy with her passing away, because Pam was one of the most genuinely heartwarming, generous people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. She affected me deeply as both a coach and a friend. I regret not being able to be present for her memorial on Nov 1, but I know that Pam was one of my biggest supporters when it came to coming to India. I will always remember Pam as being someone with an easy smile and quick wit, someone who was always ready to help those who needed it. I am sure that without her reassurance and coaching in high school, I would not be the person I am today. She will be sorely missed.

That aside, I wanted to write a quick blog before I begin the detail of my travels in South India the past few weeks. I will probably write between three and five blogs about the places I went, and I'll be posting them over the next few days-so keep an eye out for new entries. This first blog, however, I wanted to focus more on what it's like just to travel in India. After two weeks in buses and trains, I feel at least more confident than I felt a few weeks ago when I first stepped off the platform at Pune Central Station.

As with other things in India, trains really are deeply practical, though they don't seem so at first glance. There are numbers on every train and clearly marked signs telling you the end destination of the train. There are car numbers and signs posted with reservations on one side of the car. Yet, like everything else in India-they are superficially extremely complicated. Tickets you have rarely tell you the name of the train, the end destination of the train, or the platform it's leaving from. Rather, you have to show your ticket to an official who can then tell you where the train is leaving-and these officials can be hard to find or unwilling to speak English. Then there are the ticket sellers who seem generally dissatisfied with their jobs, so they're impatient to just deal with your problem and move on, even if you really don't know what you're doing. Once you figure all of that out, then there's the matter of getting on the train-no problem if you have reserved seats, but if you're taking a local train or passenger train during the middle of the day with no reserved seating, this is almost impossible. People literally lift their children through emergency windows to get them to save seats for the whole family. We Americans sat on the floor by the bathroom rather than battle with the Indians for the benches.

But, like everything in India-as complicated as it is and as frustrating as it can be, it has so much character, you really can't help but love it. We met so many people on the trains who simply wanted to talk to us and find out about us, people who wanted to help us and people who wanted to take pictures with us. It is the strangest experience. And once you're on the right train, you can't help but feel a little bit victorious as you roll away from the station. Indian Railways, at 1.6 million employees, is the biggest employer in the entire world. It's easy to see why. Every train, especially overnight trains, have an entire staff that walks up and down the aisles calling out their food and drink for sale. My friend once noted that trains have their own distinctive music, and that's definitely what it is. There's the roar of the wind and the clanking as the wheels roll over the tracks. There are soft voices of the passengers, maybe the far-off cry of an infant. Then there are the sellers, constantly calling out as they stroll through the aisles, time and time again. "Chaicoffee!!" "BiryanibiryaniCHICKENbiryani!" and dozens of trinkets and magazines and snacks and "paniwater," too. Somewhere three or four compartments down is invariably playing music on their cell phone like some kind of mini-boom box, and in all the shuffle and the distinctly Indian flavor of the whole experience, it's hard not to love. Traveling on trains ended up being an immense joy, especially compared to buses.

Buses are a very different experience. While trains are generally convenient, buses serve the hill stations and other areas that there are simply no tracks for trains. This includes large tracts of Rajesthan (which is almost all sandy desert), the Himalayas, and the higher mountains in the Ghats-which is where we were for a portion of our trip. Buses also generally run more often than trains do, so that was usually just simply more convenient if we had to be somewhere by a certain time. Buses certainly have their own character. Seats are between two and four to a bench, depending on how crowded the bus is. The key is to try and find a bus with enough space in between the bench and the seat-more often than once, the distance from the back of the bench to the bench in front of me was shorter than the length of my thigh, leaving the experience to be rather uncomfortable. This isn't always possible though, and we all felt rather Indian doing it. You pay once you're on the bus, as opposed to before it, and there are always a billion buses pulling in and out of any given station, so it's always a trick finding the right one. Luckily, some of the most helpful people we met were people at bus stands who simply saw we looked lost, and came and asked if they could help us. Bus stands stressed me out and at the same time renewed my love for the Indian people (and their fascination with anyone blond).

Indians in general were very helpful. One unnerving fact of India is that we get stared at, absolutely everywhere we go. When you just get off a long, dusty, hot bus ride and are sweaty, tired, and have absolutely no idea what you're doing but need to find a hotel, that is more than enough. To then have everyone in the surrounding city block then proceed to stare at you as you walk by-that often put me a little over the edge. The thing with staring here though, is that I would guess that 95% of the time, it's not malicious or even mean-spirited in the slightest. People are simply interested in us, which is really not the way we behave in the US. What is weird is who people choose to stare at. In this country with 1 billion people, there are hundreds of street beggars in every city with every manner of physical disability. Indians are completely indifferent to this kind of disfigurement. Instead, who do they stare at? White people. They've seen these beggars a million times before. They are a dime a dozen compared to white tourists, particularly in more rural areas. But because people are just interested in you, there is a very simple quick fix to the staring: eye contact and a genuine smile. They love it. They'll want to meet you and see pictures of your whole family and hear your whole life story. It is incredibly rewarding to go from feeling absolutely ostracized and alien, to feeling like a member of someone's family that they haven't seen in a long time. Yet it makes all the difference when it comes to traveling here.

Ok, well, I was going to talk for a while about food, but I think I'll leave that to a time when it's more appropriate and fits more fully with the place I'm talking about. Thanks to everyone for reading/being patient with my lack of updates. Look for another soon!