About halfway through my trip in India, I noticed that the spiritual experience that I thought would come to me naturally wasn't happening. I had to do something about this, but I didn't know what. I was thinking about heading north to one of the towns with a spiritual reputation, but some of those places would take a bit of time to actually get there. On my flight to New Delhi, I sat next to another American who was going to Rishikesh to practice yoga and become an instructor. Perfect. I picked his brain and found out that Rishikesh was only 4-5 hours away from New Delhi, among other things. We also talked a lot about burning man, and he told me of his experiences there the last few years. I can't wait to do that next year! Burning man 2013!
Anyway, I decided I was going to Rishikesh, but as with most things in India, booking a train ticket was a complete mess. The servers never work so you can't book anything (actually you can't anyway because they don't accept foreign credit cards) and travel agents can't book anything and...you get the picture. So after spending the day and night in New Delhi I decided to just show up at the train station for a train that was booked. They were always all booked, and the guys at the hostel said that I could just get a standing room ticket or something even if it was full. What a mess I was about to get into. I may not remember all the specifics because it's been about 2 months now at the time of this writing and it's a somewhat repressed memory hah.
So I show up at 2:30pm or so hoping to get a ticket for the 3:30pm train. The train station is bustling with Indians, not a foreigner in sight. I tried to go to a line that said "Current Reservation & Cancellation", and after fighting my way through the throngs of indians trying to cut in front of me I finally made it to the front where everyone was yelling and trying to get standing room like me I think. Everyone around me spoke only Hindi.
The lady didn't really understand English either so when I got to it she wasn't much help for me either, but she told me to go upstairs and I could do it there. So I go upstairs, and on the way I see a tourist office. I go into the nice, peaceful, empty office and talk to the lady there who speaks some English, but she pretty much tells me everything is full and says I should go to platform 1 where there's this tourist office of some sort. I don't really understand though because it seems like I'm in a tourist office. She also doesn't stress really how important it was to go to this specific tourist office.
Anyway I go upstairs and wait in another line, this time a few Indians try to help me and talk to Hindi with the people who tell me to go there, and then not there, but there, and then not there, but downstairs to where I was in the first place! I think by this point it's past 3:30pm so now I'm just trying to get any train to Rishikesh. Really though you're going to Haridwar, which is a city nearby, and then taking a taxi to Rishikesh since there's only 1 train a day directly to Rishikesh. So I go back downstairs and talk to them again after fighting through the line, and this time the lady can speak a bit more English and starts telling me all the trains later in the day that I can catch, but I can't book them with her. No, I have to go to a different train station to try to book it there. Seems like a pain. I leave again with just a note of train numbers and names of the station they leave at.
Picture of homeless people at the train station:
Now I go back to the tourist office I went to in the first place and she tells me again to go to this other tourist office, and I really have nothing left to try unless I want to go to another train station so I made the trek over there. It was quite a walk since I had to go upstairs and around and across 16 platforms to the other side where I finally started seeing signs for the foreign tourist ticket office. On my walk over there I encountered another clueless foreign tourist and I just told him to follow me. I finally arrive and I feel like I've walked into heaven. Quiet, calm, and people actually selling tickets. Seriously I'm not sure if there were any tickets being sold to anyone in the other area of the train station, it was like hell. So back in heaven, I see other foreigners who speak English and we all talk about our crazy experiences of finding this office. I think by this time it's now 4:30 or later, and it's taken me 2 hours to find this place haha. I was also somewhat stubborn in not going to it when I first heard about it, but then again I thought it was going to be the same as the messes I was in before. So I fill out a form of what I want, and wait in a small line to buy my ticket.
While in this line, I'm approached by another foreigner who turns out to be an American from Boston. He tells me he's studying there and he wants to go someplace (I don't remember where), but the train is booked for the Indian quota and they won't sell him a ticket here because he doesn't have a tourist visa, he has a student visa (so I think they have special tickets at this tourist office that they sell only to tourists even if the train is "full" with the Indian quota or something like that...I'm still not really sure how it all works). I see where this is headed, but I keep listening. He wants me to buy him the ticket using my name and passport number. Right about then it's my turn and I kind of tell him I'll think about it and go to the desk.
The guy shows me my options, and I begin to realize how this all works. First of all some of the trains I was thinking about catching are only on certain days of the week. That's was displayed on computers using a nondescript dash system with 7 dashes and the first letter of the days at the top, so it's easy to miss among the hecticness of nearby hell. So the next train is actually a night train that leaves at 10pm and gets in around 4am. Fine, I guess I'm doing the overnight. I get a second class sleeper and it's pretty cheap, I think under $10 or so.
So now that I have my ticket, I look at it to find no indication of my name or passport anywhere, and decide what the hell I'll help out a fellow citizen, especially since he offered to slightly compensate me for the risk and inconvenience. So I fill out another form with him telling me what to put in and I sketchily buy a ticket using his money. Whew, I have a ticket, he has a ticket, everyone's happy. Except now it's 5pm or so and my train isn't for 5 hours.
So we go downstairs back to hell and find the cloak room so I can drop off my bag, since I've been carrying it around this entire time and it's killing me. There's also a crazy line for that with everyone just cutting everyone because really there is no line. Another 30 minutes passes before I actually get my bag in there. Boston says that there's a nice rooftop restaurant nearby, so we leave hell and make it to a nice rooftop bar for some food.
Now we say our goodbyes and I explore the city a little bit more with the time I have left. This is another series of stressful experiences with tuk tuk drivers and cycle rickshaws trying to rip me off and screw at every opportunity possible, as well as getting chased at and barked at by crazy probably rabies infested dogs. Whatever, I eventually make it back to the train station for my train, catch it, meet a cool Japanese guy, sleep a little, and wake up literally at 4:02am and realize that the train is stopped at the station and I have to get off at that moment. Boom fast pack-up (not much I didn't really unpack) and escape from the train before it leaves the Haridwar station. I take my overpriced taxi ride into town, a little less than an hour away, and make it to Rishikesh by sunrise at about 5am.
To find out more about what happens once I arrive in Rishikesh, see my next blog post on My Yoga Ashram Spiritual Experience in Rishikesh, India.
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