August 31: Transportation #2

The symposium will be over tomorrow, and on Thursday I'm planning on heading south on what is supposed to be one of the most comprehensive railway systems anywhere. Except, um, I just can't find the time tables online (the Indian railway has a great website with lovely maps -- just the actual time table page refuses to work for me) and it turns out the trains don't really go to any of the places I want to go and I am about to chuck it all in exchange for taking a bus. But then I found this:

BUSES AND TRAINS IN INDIA

Buses - "But by far the worst places to sleep are on overnight bus rides in India. The roads are so bad that I kept falling forward out of my seat and hitting my head against the seat in front of me. Not a wink of sleep the whole night and a sore back and neck to boot." Contributed by Erik Bielefeldt

Buses - "this is relevant to 2001, but it will probably be still relevant till the next century:
if you want to have an overnight ride on an Indian bus, just consider two things:
1. NEVER sit at the back of the bus. the buses are designed in such a way that every small bump will break the bones of the people sitting at the back.
2. be careful about sitting too close to the driver - the buses have horns that can be used as a non-conventional weapon, and the drivers use them quite often through the ride. however, they can be convinced to try and not use the horn so often." Contributed by ? (Added 18 JAN 03)

Overnight Train (New Dehli to Varanasi) - " June 1996 - By far the worst sleeping/traveling story I have, after traveling around the globe, is when my girl friend and I made the mistake of getting a 2nd class sleeper from New Delhi to Varanasi, India. Pure Hell. Beside the rank odor and the disgustingly dirty "beds", we really never managed to sleep because of being constantly bothered. In the middle of the night a woman tried to join my girl friend in her bed, and at one point a thief from outside the train tried to reach in through the metal barred windows and make off with what he could. He was caught, but he then grabbed a hold of the sleepy passenger by the collar as the train started off, both screaming at each other. We felt like we were on a cattle train. Another winner is trying to sleep on any bus in India. Just suck it up and figure you're just not going to get a wink. "

Clearly I'm just going to have to suck it up and go down to the train station, wait in line, and figure this whole thing out. . .