30th May 1992 Day 315

The Diary
We weren't woken up by my alarm clock because it had disappeared somewhere between Pokhara and Varanasi but we did get up before 9am and left Om Lodge and headed to the station. We went to the tourist office, checked with the bloke there, I guarded the bags and Oz joined the queue he was told to go to. 40mins later he was back. "I've been standing in the wrong queue, he told me to stand in the wrong queue!".

We asked again and this time I went to queue for the ticket. The queue was in the other station hall and it was absolute pandemonium. Whereas in the first hall lots of people were just sitting about, in this hall everyone was queueing. And queueing in a very un-British-like manner. The queues were 50-60 yards long, single file apart from the melee by the ticket office window and everyone was squeezed tightly together as if several hundred people were simultaneously undergoing anal sex. I couldn't see Allahabad on the boards so I wandered towards the front. A policeman came up and asked me where I wanted to go. I told him and he said "follow me". He walked towards one of the windows and with the aid of a colleague he physically dragged people out of the scrum and told me to go to the front. I did just that but still had to push and shove and fight with people to get up to the window. The policeman was saying "shout at them". I did and after a couple of minutes I got the tickets. I dashed back to Oz barging my way through the queues - coitus interruptus.

Nobody seemed to be able to tell us which carriages we should get in and we weren't sure it was the right train when it turned up. We decided just to get on and we got a seat in one of the filthiest, fly-infested carriages I've had the misfortune to travel on. It wasn't long before the train was packed to the rafters with Indians and their luggage. The train slowly trundled to Allahabad, we ran out of water and the seats were really uncomfortable. Still, it was only an hour late when we arrived. Two rickshaw-wallahs almost came to blows over who had our fare but we soon made it to the tourist bungalow. Luxury. We had the usual argument over change - we haven't got any and neither have they. 

Another rickshaw to the Nehru's house, Anand Bhawan. We were stopped taking a photo of me sitting cross-legged by a plaque that said "Gandhi worked here". I'll never be a Mahatma. Going back the rickshaw-wallahs didn't seem to want our money - "try getting a taxi south of the river' said Oz. The one we finally did get couldn't find the tourist bungalow so we got out and walked. We ate at the bungalow. More meat and yet again no mutton.

2012
My recollection of the policeman was that he smacked quite a few of the queuers with his big stick to get them out of the way. It was very surreal.


Travelling on trains in India is just a tad different from inter-railing in Europe.


"try getting a taxi south of the river" - London reference. Come on you get it.