Mattyfisk
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Buying a train ticket in India.
Part 1. Just queue up like everyone else.
Go to the station. Pick the shortest queue to a ticket window. Line up. You'll notice a second queue forming near the window. These are the queue jumpers.
It's 40 degrees in here. Everyone's sweating. If your queue moves, you stick close to the guy in front. This stops anyone getting in front of you. You have to almost hump him, and anyone behind you will do the same to you. You'll smell sweat, onions and shampoo. Wait.
When you get to the front, someone will push in. You're nearly there, so you don't mind too much. Then it happens again. You're on holidays, you've got time, let it go. These guys probably have to get somewhere fast. Then you notice the guys behind the queue jumper already have their hands with money inside the window, ready to go. You can't push them away. You let 3 more buy their tickets. The whole queue behind you is pushing.
Remember, everyone's going somewhere different, so this requires the ticket guy to enter all their details, change their money and print the ticket. You feel relief when you hear the old printer squalking out the ticket.
You're there. You're covering up the window with your hands. Someone tries to get their money under a gap and you hold them off, then a woman with a baby pushes in. You let her go. When she's done, a couple of seniors behind her push in.
Finally, you get the ticket seller's attention. He's all yours. You tell him where you want to go. He looks it up on his computer, there are tickets. You know this, because you've already been online to check, but there aren't many left. Then he tells you to go to counter 4. Why? He won't say.
So you go to counter 4 and do the same thing again. When you've pushed your way to the front, counter 4 tells you to go back to counter 1, where you just were. You tell counter 4 this, and he tells you to go to another building instead. The foreigner's ticket office.
In the past, you would have gone back to counter 1 again like you were told. You would have gone back and forth, queued up, and given the ticket seller a new reason to sell you a ticket before he sent you back to the other counter. But now, you're learning. Logic is pointless. You're going to the foreigners' office.
You can't find it straight away, of course. You ask. No one knows where it is. You search every part of the station, and after an hour, find the office up some stairs behind a room market "Controller".
This office is nice. Overhead fans, a couple of travel posters with pictures of mountains and temples. Here, you wait on a chair. You sit down and breathe. When she's done with the 2 elderly German tourists, the woman behind the desk invites you over and offers you a seat. Everything about her is fresh and courteous. Her sari is clean, she has fresh jasmine in her hair and an immaculate red dot on her forehead, no smears, no sweat.
You tell her your destination and train. She looks, but suggests you take another train instead. No thanks, you want the one you said. She looks again and is a bit more insistent. The overnight train is better. You ask why.
She doesn't want to tell you, but it turns out they sold all the tickets when you were downstairs queuing.
Right. The overnight train it is. The ticket lady asks for US dollars and your passport. Sorry, you have the passport, but just rupees. Oh well, that should be okay. Finally, you hear the sound of the ticket printing out. You thank the lady, fold up the ticket, and put it in your wallet, safe.
Not bad, eh? That's the morning spent buying the ticket. The next step is to get the train.
No problem. You get to the station by 5. The train leaves at 6, so you're safe. You find the platform and the printed out ticket sheet - there's your name: PB Karnal, your berth number, your age and gender (undetermined). You're good to go.
You go and get a chai. You queue up at 2 separate counters, one to pay and get a voucher, the other one to get the tea. Then you go back and check the board again, just to be sure. Yes, there's your name, the train name and number and your berth number. Only someone called PB Karnal can have that berth. This HAS to work.
By 5.45, the train's still not there. At 6, there's an announcement, but the speakers aren't loud enough. You keep waiting. You don't want to miss your train.
At 7, you decide to find out. You go to the counter called Enquiries. This is worse than the ticket counters. Like all Enquiries counters on all Indian stations, it's a crowd, not a queue. It consists of maybe 6 boys, probably uni students, swarming at the window and a vague queue behind them. The boys aren't going anywhere.
Behind the window, the Enquiries guy looks vague. Someone's drawn up a whiteboard with the late trains. You can't make it out. You decide to become a queue jumper yourself. You force your way up the line and get through the boys. You directly ask Enquiries about your train. He asks you to repeat it. You do. Puri Express? 10 o'clock. Are you sure? Sure.
You find yourself a place on the floor next to all the families and sleeping dogs.
You wait 3 hours, the train's not there, but sometime in the early morning, it arrives. The next day, you make it to Puri about 8 hours late - 15 hours later than the train you wanted to catch.
That's the simple way to get a train, Rhino. You know, just queue up like everyone else.
I'll deal with the new, "streamlined" way in Part 2.
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