The long weekend

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We board the train at 11.00 pm in Agra, the carriage is filthy and crowded, we are not surprised. It is slow, and worringly delayed. We disembark at Patna at 10.35pm the following evening, a 24hr journey and make our connection to New Jalpaiguri by 10 minutes (we should have had 5 hrs to regroup in Patna).

We fight to get on the train that will wind us slowly up to the foothills of the Himalaya. Every space is filled, children and their mothers are even curled up around the filthy toilet cubicles and the air is thick with humanity, putrescent and intoxicating. It is a rolling village in which nobody would want to stay or settle.

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Our bunks are both upper berth, in three tier, meaning between the rock hard slabs of bed and broken fans we can barely raise our heads. Plus onto this tiny platform must fit our luggage. We both repeatedly whack our heads on the fittings and rusting rivets, whilst trying to swat the marauding army of mosquitos, presumably a plague sent - by god it's one of those weekends.

Like our fellow occupants we are dirty, smelly and have endured Indian transport for the last 36 hours. We both cry some dry tears. Can we upgrade? No, the way to AC is blocked, we are locked in. How can we stand this? How can we make it through? The train pulls out and some of the lights dim, the wallah's cries thin and within 2-3 minutes we are both sleeping like babes, and I am snoring like a bear! Amazingly we both have the best nights sleep since leaving the south.

The following morning around noon we are still on the train looking over the vast plateau that stretches out through India, north west into Nepal and onto the great Himalaya range. Early pineapple crops stretch for unfathomable miles and we have a not uninteresting conversation about the price of maize and rice per kilo in our respective countries with our fellow bed mates.

The journey continues, a rickshaw to Siliguri from NJP, then a museum piece jeep from Siliguri to Darjeeling into the himalayan foothills and the freezing fog. The temperature seems to drop 5 degrees for every 500 metres and we, along with the rest of our West Bengali counterparts are woefully underprepared and shivering like jellies. We dont know what time we arrive in Darjeeling (it is dark though and Sunday evening), we just know that we need long deep sleep, hot water and chai, and desperately some warm clothes.