Seat of Our Pants

We’ve been on our fair share of transportation in the last five months. I’m pretty sure we’ve ridden everything, short of a space shuttle. If I had to choose, after all this research we’ve done, I’d have to say that the train is my favorite.

All the important things can be done on a train. You can stretch out with a little walk down the aisle. You can read without getting car sick. There is often a toilet to use, so you don’t have to hold back on drinking liquids (Martin and I often go an entire day without drinking water while we travel on buses – you never know when you will be given a bathroom break and they don’t stop if you time your bathroom need poorly).

It’s been quite since we last traveled on a train. It was Vietnam, four months ago. We’ve been in India for three weeks, a place I expected we would only travel by train in, and we just boarded our first one yesterday.

It was only a 3 hour ride, but we learned many things. First, even if you have a reservation, your seat will be taken. We had to insist that the seat numbers printed on our tickets were the same ones that a man had sprawled himself across. Second, the seating is mostly a free-for-all, so reservations are necessary if you want to have your own seat. People also have no qualms about standing with their butt in your face. A man decided that standing in the aisle, next to my seat, would be a good way to pass an hour. His rear end was 5 inches from my face.

Next train we’re booking into a slightly higher class, which promises no haggling over seats we’ve paid for or slight fart-smelling aisle standers or ladies that look  at us like this:

Happy train riding ladies

 We hope, at least.

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