Around India in 80 Trains (35 page)

‘Now, where have you come from then?’ he asked, inspecting a banana the size of his thumb.

Unsure if he was addressing me or the banana, I replied, ‘London.’

‘Here to trace your roots?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I’m awfully deaf in one ear, you must shout.’

‘I’m travelling around India by train for a few months.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘TRAIN, travelling around India by TRAIN.’

He peered up at the sky. ‘Yes it does look as if it might, but those nice people have left some brollies here for us.’

He handed me a golf umbrella and began to fiddle with the handle. It flicked open, poking him in the stomach and he jumped back and beamed. ‘Born in Shimler m’self, have you been?’

‘Yes, I took the toy train up there two weeks ago.’

‘Funny old place now, quite a mishmash. Old hill train still running, you know, used to ride it when I was a lad. You really should try to visit if you can.’

‘I will.’

‘Visited Darjeeling?’

‘No, I haven’t been yet, but it’s on my list.’

James was now facing the other way but leaning precariously towards me, waggling his ear. ‘Bloody long journey, if I were you I would skip it and just do the short loop round to Ghum. You see enough and you won’t want to kill yourself before you reach the bottom.’

Back in Mysore, the following afternoon, I had time to kill after lunch and went for a walk around the station. Shankar had informed me that Mysore Junction housed some of the best retiring rooms in India: like the trains themselves, retiring rooms varied from immaculate to downright inhumane. They were offered on a first-come-first-served basis unless passengers were looking for lodgings at Mumbai Central Station where Western Railways was soon to launch an inquiry into five officials who were alleged to have lived illegally for several years in the station’s rooms, while claiming a monthly housing allowance.

At the top of a staircase was a carved wooden frame engraved with flowers and creepers that contained eight lights and a switch:

PLEASE PRESS THE SWITCH TO KNOW THE AVAILABILITY OF THE ROOMS RED LIGHT INDICATES THAT THE ROOMS ARE OCCUPIED

I pressed the switch and the whole row glowed red. Disappointed but curious, I wandered into the pillared hallway whose marble floors had been polished to a sheen. Slipping inside an open door, I found a beautiful old bedroom flooded with sunshine and fitted with arched windows. Curtains twisted in the breeze and two colonial-style wooden beds stood against the wall. The sound of scrubbing and gushing water came from the en-suite bathroom so I poked my head around and spied a bent back slapping a rag at the floor. An array of toiletries lined the sink—a vast improvement on the dried dregs of soap nibbled by rats in Delhi.

From across the platforms Patrick waved to tell me that the coach had arrived to take us to Mysore Palace so I abandoned sniffing around toilets and joined the group. On board I took out my logbook and began to count up the trains as the guide swayed in the aisle, fellating his microphone.

‘We are now passing the University of Mysore which is comparable to the Oxford University in London …’

The Golden Chariot was train number 52. If I hopped off in Goa before it looped back to Bangalore, I could climb the Konkan coast to Mumbai. Within a couple of days I would be back on track and heading to Udhampur.

‘There are 600 plus steps to the top of the hill, so if you’re feeling tough then you can wear some socks and climb, otherwise there are palanquins available.’

Murmurs of relief buzzed around the group just as a man sidled up to the guide and whispered in her ear. She clicked her fingers in the air.

‘Aaaaactually … the palanquin bearers are on strike today, so there are no palanquins to take you to the top.’

Half the group got back on the coach.

Shravanabelagola, which seemed to elicit more intrigue from the group for its name than for its importance as a site of Jain pilgrimage, was a township in the Hassan district in Karnataka. Translated loosely as ‘the white pond of the ascetic’ it was home to a multiplicity of temples, monuments and shrines scattered between two hills named Chandragiri and Vindyagiri, attracting hundreds of meditating monks and tourists. Six hundred steps up the Vindyagiri hill led to the Gomateshwara, a 17.5m–high statue of one of Emperor Rishabhadeva’s sons, who had renounced his kingdom to pursue meditation, living in forests until he achieved enlightenment. Carved out of a single piece of granite in AD 981, it towers above the township as a symbol of salvation and enlightenment to the Jain community.
The
Times of India
readers had voted it at the top of the seven wonders of India.

Digging around for my iPod, I took a deep breath, located the
Rocky
soundtrack and began to power up the 600 steps, determined to count each one, but collapsed halfway to nurse a cramp in my calf. Most of the Indian families bounded ahead. There was something about pilgrimages that triggered determination, drive and a superhuman power to reach a goal, even if the goal was simply to touch the feet of a smiling monolith. Squatting on a step I looked down onto the view. In the foreground Chandragiri pushed through the rubble and boulders, sprouting tufts of green, while an otherwise pancake-flat expanse reached to the haze on the horizon. A patchwork of palm trees and lakes blanketed the landscape, the tips of temples and pillars peeking out from in between. Next to me stood a man wearing an orange cloak, striped scarves, a stack of beads and peacock feathers sprouting from his turban, with the outline of a swan chalked onto his cheek. He looked me up and down, smirked and lit a beedi.

At the top of the hill, visitors milled at the feet of the naked statue, said to be the tallest monolith in the world although the Sphinx vied for the same title. Vines snaked between the Gomateshwara’s thighs and curled around his upper arms like wedding bracelets, indicating his time spent in the forests. His ears hung like the Buddha and his face bore an air of contentment. While I lingered, watching the priests wash the toes with milk, a second priest beckoned me forward and pressed his thumb from the bridge of my nose up into my parting. Patrick wandered over.

‘Quite something, eh?’ He eyed the overzealous swipe of kumkum on my forehead.

‘Are you Hindu?’ he asked, stressing the second syllable, as we made our way down the steps, springing like gazelles on the slabs of hot rock.

‘I am, but I’m not religious.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I’d rather put theory into practice instead of getting bogged down with ritual.’

‘It has a real lure, doesn’t it?’

‘Ritual?’

‘No, I meant India. Westerners are very taken by its exoticism. And understandably, it’s a very beautiful country.’ He thrust his arms up at the expanse ahead. ‘I mean, it’s so easy to fall in love with this.’ He paused and grinned at me. ‘Very clever people, you lot.’

‘In what way?’

‘Like Brazilians to coffee and the Arabs to oil, Indians have an abundance of spirituality to sell to the West.’ He squinted back up the stairs. ‘I don’t believe in God myself, but I still admire the workmanship that goes into what they believe in. There’s a lot to be said for the hard work and diligence that comes with that religious mindset.’

At the bottom of the steps (615, 616 or maybe 617?) a vendor was hacking the tops off fresh coconuts. He popped a straw in the top of two and handed them over as Patrick and I drained them, scooped out the flesh and climbed back onto the coach.

Over the next three days the train ploughed through the heart of the old Vijayanagara Empire, unloading us to pick through the city of broken boulders in Hampi and clamber through the temple caves at Badami. It arrived on Easter Sunday at the Goan Basilica of Bom Jesus, to sneak a peek at St Francis Xavier—at least what was left of him. On a rare display of the body for veneration, a Portuguese woman had bitten off his big toe, now displayed in a reliquary in the basilica, while one of his hands resides in Rome, and a forearm in Macau.

On the last night on board, I lay in bed watching a newsflash about a bomb blast in Kakapora near Srinagar that had damaged the only railway track in Kashmir. Since late 2008 the service had run between Qazigund and Baramulla in an attempt to strengthen ties between the occupied territories and India. It had been added to our train list, albeit within brackets, beneath a hovering question mark. I drew a pencil line through the listing, switched off the television and lay listening to the hum of the air conditioner.

I was now ready to get back on the real railways.

Peering out of the window at Vasco da Gama station, I kicked off my flip-flops and put my feet up on the ripped vinyl.

Home again.

The Vasco da Gama Kulem passenger train was due into Madgaon just before 2pm, leaving enough time for me to join any number of overnight services up to Mumbai. Munching on a handful of banana chips, I flipped to the back page of my logbook where a list of trains caught my eye:

1. Ooty toy train (do after mudslide, otherwise scary)
   
2. Fairy Queen—she might not be running but check anyway
   
3. Gorakhpur to Nautanwa
   
4. Goa to Londa, MOST BEAUTIFUL
   

I recognised the scrawls from our first meeting with Shankar at his Wembley office. The list was a handful of trains that he had run off the top of his head as unmissable routes. As the train jerked and began to move, number four stared at me. I grabbed my bags. It was criminal to come so close and miss the most beautiful route. Two boys sniggered as I struggled with my things, one leaning across to take a photo of me as I tumbled down the steps and onto the platform to await the Goa Express to Londa.

‘Come, sit with us only!’ Pramod sucked his teeth. ‘Why do you want to sit here, there are many seats that side, come!’ He cocked his head to one side, his bouffant flapping at the front. ‘You are really mad I tell you.’

Pramod was a recent engineering graduate who had just started work at a bank in Pune. He and his colleagues had taken the Easter weekend off to come down to Goa and—he put a thumb to his lips—get ‘high’. The aftermath of their ‘wodka-fest’ hung about his T-shirt and he grinned.