Monday 24th August: Day 1 on the train

Leisurely breakfast to be savoured: French toast, tea without sugar (very nice) - probably the last decent food for ages, then off to catch the 9.40 Assam Mail Train. A rickshaw man agreed to take all three of us, plus our rucksacks, but he became aggitated when we had to pass a policeman on duty. We noticed that the proximity of the policemen also prompted him to turn on his meter. It made me feel even more certain that most of the time the auto-rickshaw drivers were ripping us off.

The station was, as always (always! I'd only been there four times before and two of them only to buy tickets) very busy, but we found our names on the reservation lists without too much difficulty. At first I couldn't find my name but Ben found it - his surname begins with and E, and he found my name under the E's for Elizabeth - I'd been looking under B. After that we easily found the other names. Finding the seats was also easy and we were pleasantly surprised that they were padded and not wooden. Relatively speaking we had aplenty of space too. This was luxury - but the journey would be long.

Very little of interest happened during the day - the journey progressed pretty much the same hour by hour. We passed through very flat, dry looking land with occasionally  patch of what looked like mud huts and small groups of kids watching the train pass. As we moved East the design of these "huts" seemed to change, becoming taller, longer and generally more neatly laid out (by which I suppose I mean arranged in rows).  I tried to take a few photos but the train was moving and the film too slow - but I got one when the train slowed down to pass through a small station:

At most stations where the train stopped, it was there for between 10 and 30 minutes, plenty of time to get off and buy drinks or fruit. We had brought our own supply of sandwiches - tuna and cheese & tomato - they were delicious, but at each station we were besieged by the chai and other trades men. They weren't too bad, either we wanted to buy or we didn't and they wouldn't waste time missing other customers when they got the message "no thanks", but there were also the beggars. They were a different matter and altogether more difficult for me to deal with.

During the night we came into the rain, we had caught up with the monsoon. It rained very hard and in through the window and we were getting wet. Neither Jane nor I, nor both of us, could pull down the shutter but the soldier helped out. Surprisingly the bunks were not too uncomfortable and we all managed a reasonable nights sleep despite sleeping attached to our valuables.

Tuesday 25th August: Day 2 on the train

We were woken between 4:30 and 5:00. There was a lot of activity on the train. it was still raining, the shutters were still closed and the train was getting very smelly. The baby nearby lay on his back on his mother's lap and pissed onto the floor. The smell got worse. People had left and others boarded the train during the night. There was a lot of squashed food on the compartment floor.

The train stopped in Baranni station and everyone started to get off - but we stayed where we were. The guard cum ticket collector had told us that this train went to Mazafarpur - our destination (it was the Assam express after all and Assam was much further East) . After a few minutes we were told to leave the train - we had to change - we had been misinformed or had misunderstood. At least it had stopped raining.

The next train was packed, but somehow we struggled on. It was just before 7:00. This time the seats were wooden, which we didn't find pleasant after spending the night on a padded, but very hard, bunk. We hope the journey wouldn't take long but the train moved very slowly and was more often stopped. It started raining again, and the windows came down! Awful, smelly, crowded, hot and dirty.

At 9:00 we were told it was another 60km to Mazafarpur - NOT FAR NOW, I thought - and that it would take two more hours - 30km per hour by train - our thoughts and words are not repeatable. We had had enough of the train. Then an argument started.

Someone wanted our seat. It seems he "always sat there". The other passengers seemed to b eon our side and we sat there quietly trying to keep out of it while they argued. Later the passengers changed again. At one station Ben got off and someone took his seat. Jane and I objected to no avail. Everyone laughed. Ben came back and squashed himself in. The stroppy guy who'd taken his seat was talkative and tried to buy us drinks. The chai was awful.

The train stopped again and Ben found out that it didn't arrive at Mazafarpur until 12:30 - almost another three hours! We were very uncomfortable. The area we were passing though was dismal and became more and more flooded and depressing. The "facilities" offered at the stations gradually became fewer and fewer. The train was cramped and smelly.

At 11:30 the train stopped. A really dismal looking place, not a station but a lot of the passengers got off and didn't come back. We sat tight. At just after 12:00 the train moved again - slowly and for what appeared to be less than a kilometer - and we had arrived in a flooded station.


We had arrived. Mazafarpur. It was raining, but we'd had enough of Indian Rail and we were off. To get to Raxaul on the Nepalese border was our next objective.