Once we’d recovered from the excitement of the camel safari
it was time to move on from Rajasthan and head further north via Delhi. This
time we took an overnight sleeper train which, like the sleeper buses, in
themselves are somewhat of an experience. We were told that even people who
have lived in India for ten years still don’t understand how the rail system
works or to be more accurate how the reservations system works and we were no
exception! We did attempt to buy our own tickets…once…but we soon learnt the
error of our ways. It appears you can either battle your way through a queue
for 2 hours in a railway reservations office to be told there are no seats
available. Or you can pay a little extra and buy through someone who knows
someone who knows someone who works in the reservations office and get
apparently unavailable confirmed tickets within a matter of minutes.
We always travelled sleeper class (non-air conditioned)
which suited us fine, they’re a lot cheaper than the air conditioned carriages
but not quite roughing it in seated second class. Each ‘compartment’ has 8
births and depending on where your allocated seat is, dictates whether you get
woken up at 5.30 so that people can sit on your bed or you can sleep through
but suffer with the increased temperature and decreased airflow of the top
bunk! All in all the trains were fine. We had heard horror stories of people
having all their possessions stolen on the trains and so we were particularly,
anal is probably the word, about locking our bags up and keeping valuables
safely tucked away. Subsequently we didn’t have any problems with getting
mugged or having item ‘disappear’ on the train. The main problem we encountered
was just everyone’s fascination with us, which wasn’t really a problem as such until
you were really tired and just wanted to sleep. It’s slightly off putting
having a parade of people stream past to have a good look. Often returning for
a third or fourth time with family members and friends just to make sure no one
misses out!
We had a brief 4 hour stop in Delhi before our connecting
train so we had some lunch and a little stroll around the streets before going
in search of an internet café. After lugging our bags for over an hour with no
joy we stumbled across a very inviting KFC offering free wifi, right next to
New Delhi station. In the hubbub of swelteringly hot Delhi it was like a sweet,
air conditioned, internet providing haven… what’s more the chicken to what had
so far been a vegetarian trip was (surprisingly) very tasty! It took us a while
to actually connect to the internet and with only about half an hour to go
before our train we were glad when we eventually did. I don’t think we’d been
online more than about 5 minutes though when the KFC manager approached us and
asked if we would like a tour of the kitchens?! Too polite to say no we spent
the next 20 mins touring the pristine kitchens being shown how they make the ‘world-renowned’
crispy KFC chicken. Basically they
marinade the chicken and then put it in the deep fat fryer and select the
correct number of minutes. We learnt that if you put the packet chicken in the
freezer it becomes rock hard! We visited both the walk in fridge and freezer
learning that they’re called such because unlike a normal freezer at home, you
can walk inside! Eager to sound interested and hopefully make up for the tears
of laughter rolling down our cheeks, Mike enquired further about how they
prepare the ‘special’ marinade used for the chicken. The use of the word
prepare is perhaps slightly misleading…they actually just mix a pre-prepared
marinade powder with water to create the delicious KFC chicken marinade! Credit
to the manager…he took his job very seriously and was very proud of the job all
his colleagues were doing but the whole situation was so surreal and of all the
places to be disturbed when you’re desperate to use the internet! Our time was
up though and we had to sprint across New Delhi station to our platform,
managing to board our train to Amritsar with literally seconds to spare.
 |
| Washing up is no small feat at the golden temple! |
Amritsar is the home of the Sikh Golden Temple. An amazing
place where they feed an estimated 60-80,000 people a day all completely free
of charge! We stayed in the ‘foreigner dormitory’ inside the temple grounds,
again completely free of charge. From previous experiences in India, we arrived
more than a little skeptical about the ‘free’ accommodation and food and were
fully expecting to be heavily pressured into donating but we couldn’t have been
more wrong. There were a few donation boxes around the grounds and although I’m
sure the majority of people do donate not a single person alluded to it during
our stay. The whole operation is run by volunteers and is really quite
phenomenal to witness. There’s a huge machine that churns out chapattis all day
and there’s hot chai on tap at any hour of the day or night. When you want to
eat you collect a plate and spoon and are then ushered into the huge dining
room. Everyone sits cross legged in lines, following the Sikh principal that
regardless of race, cast, sex or wealth everyone is equal and should eat
alongside each other. The volunteers then walk up and down the lines with their
big pots of dhal or rice pudding and you eat your fill!
 |
| The Golden Temple |
In the evening we went to watch the very extravagant closing of the gates at the Indian/Pakistan border. Apparently according to our Kiwi friend they had to tone down the marching because the guards were getting knee problems but they still put on a very good display with high kicks and goose stepping. We arrived when there were already hundreds of Indians gathered around the gates to watch and thought we wouldn’t be able to see anything. However our pale skin stood out in the crowd and we were soon ushered around to the reserved ‘foreigners’ section right at the front.
 |
| High Kicking |
 |
| Goose Stepping |
No comments:
Post a Comment