Maybe I just didn’t listen closely enough to my own advice. When we were ready to leave Mount Abu, we had about a week and a half left in India. We didn’t want to spend all that time in Mumbai, so we needed an intermediate destination to burn a few days. I figured Ahmedabad, just cause it’s “on the way”, but the folks we stayed with in Mount Abu convinced us that we should go check out Mandvi, a nice beach town on the far west coast of Gujarat (about as far west in India as one can get).
This plan would have been splendid if we could have gotten seats on the sleeper train from Mount Abu to Bhuj (an hour from Mandvi), but unfortunately it’s obscure enough that there’s no tourist quota (which is how we’ve been able to book all our train tickets on such limited notice so far). So rather than dropping the idea altogether, we turned to plan B, in 4 parts, which only begins to sound miserable in retrospect.
Part I: Ride a bus for two hours down the winding, mountainous road to Palampur while whole families are puking out the windows in front of and behind us—the entire time.
Part II: Buy general seating, non-AC tickets for the 6 hour train from Palampur to Gandhidham (because those are the only seats that exist). On the plus side they only cost 150 Rs or about $3.50—for the both of us! Eat lunch at a nearby restaurant that only had menus in Hindi (that’s ok, food words are the only Hindi we know: namaste, aloo mutter and paneer masala, please). Get on the train at 2:45, traveling west. It’s 45°C outside. The windows are open. It’s bone dry. The water in our water bottles feels hot to the touch. Our sweat instantly evaporates leaving white streaks of salt on our clothes.
Your blogger on a very hot train before things went “south”
In the past, this predilection only reared its head when I went day hiking. I prefer a trail or combination of trails that brings me back to the starting point without taking the same trail twice—even if it means a significantly longer hike.
It’s one of the many aspects I find so compelling about this adventure. Circumnavigating the globe is the ultimate loop.
But it turns out that my “loop complex” goes a little deeper. Not everything in life has a destination that is the same as the origin. Take our trip through India for example. We knew two things: we were flying into Kolkata on April 4th and we were flying out of Mumbai on May 5th. From East to West. Everything else in between was to be decided en route.
But as I’ve written before, one of the most paralyzing things about this trip is being faced with the decision “where next” and having EVERY CITY IN INDIA as the possible solution set. It makes travel exhausting and NO FUN.
Constraints
This is where my “loop theory of travel” becomes the “linear theory”. The rules are similar: No there and backs. No crossing a trail we’ve already blazed. Every step forward must bring us one step closer to our end point. The only exception would be for a must-see-cannot-miss destination. Because there’s no sense in adhering to rules blindly.
The most chaotic part of our overnight train from Kolkata to Mughal Sarai was the taxi ride to Howrah Station at 8 at night. The shear volume and variety of traffic en route boggles the mind.
We had class 2AC tickets, basically 2nd class, air-conditioned—but it was effectively 1st class, as no 1AC trains depart from Kolkata. The train car was relatively wide and spacious. The AC was pleasantly copious. In addition, each compartment had a fan. Stephanie felt fine. Phew.
Stephanie gives the thumbs up
After a while there were six people sitting in our compartment with 4 beds: a newlywed couple with their mother, an older man who didn’t say a word, and the two of us. The couple, two doctors from Kolkata, started the usual interrogation, but added some more pointed questions about how much this months-long travel was costing us and what exactly was the benefit—how would it affect us professionally? I’m not sure our answers were satisfying—it’s been a long time since we had to justify what has seemed self-evident to everyone we meet—but we tried. As the train started to pull out of the station, the husband stopped whatever he was saying mid-sentence, bid us goodbye, and the couple rushed off the train. Now the sleeping arrangements made sense. Stephanie and I took the top bunks so the mother and the old man could sleep on the bottom.
I drifted in and out of sleep, waking ahead of my 7:30am alarm. We were due to arrive in Mughal Sarai at 8:10. The train would continue after that and I did not want to miss our stop. There was no conductor announcing stations nor checking to make sure we got off at the right place.
To make a long story short, we survived Kolkata. But oh, the honking!
We arrived just before noon, took a yellow Ambassador taxi to a part of town where there were a bunch of guesthouses, ordered lunch at a local Bengali restaurant, ate with our right hands, found a grungy, overpriced, but acceptable hotel for one or two nights, took a taxi to find the tourist train ticket booking office, stood in the wrong line for half an hour, discovered we were in the wrong line 5 minutes before closing time, ran next door to the right line, miraculously got two tickets on an overnight sleeper train to Mughal Sarai (about 12km from Varanasi) the following day, took a taxi back to our hotel, taxi driver INCREDIBLY let us off on the wrong street saying it was the right street, walked around for a while to get our bearings, got our bearings, stopped at a restaurant for dinner, exited the restaurant only to discover it was pouring, ran from awning to awning all the way back to our hotel, damp but not drenched.
My wager, when I suggested to Stephanie that we actually spend a day or two in Kolkata to acclimate ourselves, was that it wouldn’t be that different from any of the other places we’ve been. The honking is just like Vietnam, it feels as crowded as Hanoi or Saigon, it’s as dusty and hot as Cambodia, and the reckless driving is similar to Bali or the Philippines. Of course there are elements that are uniquely Indian, like the odd cow wandering in the middle of the road or the horse pulled carts, but I think all our previous travel experiences, combined, prepared us well for what we experienced on that first day in Kolkata.
On the second day I wanted a kati roll, the street food specialty of the city. It is made by frying an egg on a roti bread, topping it with onions, hot sauce, and a filling of your choice—chicken curry being the most popular. So we walked down to aptly-named Hot Kati Roll on Park Street, and I got one.
Rolling my “egg chicken roll”Enjoying myself, thoroughly
So the big reunion, having been apart for nearly 2 weeks (after spending every waking hour together for 7 months!), was supposed to happen on March 31st in the Bangkok airport. Stephanie was going to take a boat from Koh Phangan to Koh Samui and then catch an early morning flight the following day to Bangkok while I was flying in from Chiang Mai. Cue Chariots of Fire as we ran towards each other in slow motion. We’d have a three hour layover before boarding a two hour flight to Kolkata.
By the way, have I mentioned yet that we’re going to India?
Originally we wanted to visit Nepal, after Stephanie discovered the Annapurna Circuit, so we ended up getting 5 year India visas back home (it was either that or 6 months from date of issue) assuming that we might need to pass through India to get to/from Nepal. Along the way I read some less than encouraging things about Nepal, but more importantly, the idea of doing a 20-day trek kind of lost its luster for us after being on the road for so many months. Instead I started to fantasize about eating my way across India (Indian food being quite possibly my favorite cuisine, with Thai a close second). So we gave ourselves a month to canvas the country.
And because Stephanie was extremely apprehensive about India, having in particular heard horror stories about Krazy Krowded Kolkata™, we planned to stay in a fancy $200/night hotel near the airport, and then catch a flight the next morning to the somewhat more subdued (we hoped) Varanasi.
