Travel Blog: Buying a train ticket and one more village visit....

India, Day 10

I had a good times with my host in the area where I stayed in India from days 5-10.  But, all good things must come to an end.  The end would arrive with a much more pronounced snap than I originally expected, as will be detailed tomorrow...

This day, however, was spent in a 40km trip to the nearest big town where we bought train tickets for the next day's journey southward.  Our trip to the train station almost became a debacle, though, because I had yet to learn how train travel works in India.  During the middle part of the year, when most of the people in India do their work or leisure traveling, tickets are booked as long as six months in advance.  Whenever anyone tries to book a ticket for next-day, or even next-month travel during the busy season, the best you can manage is a situation similar to flying standby: you are on the list, but not guaranteed a seat.  And given the nature of Indian trains, there isn't always room to stand either...

I didn't learn any of this until the moment we walked into the ticket office to purchase our tickets.  To the Indian culture, this is natural.  To the western mindset, I couldn't understand why my host, with the knowledge of my visit, didn't book the tickets three months prior.  Cultural differences, I suppose.

At any rate, our two-hour tempo ride home was punctuated by one last visit to some of the local gypsies.  And, again, I was impressed by my host's fearlessness at walking into a clump of buildings and assembling a crowd from what seemed like nowhere, and we would speak to them.

Whenever I travel through India, people always ask me if it's "safe" to go to remote places to speak to the villagers.  My opinion on this subject is colored a bit, because a)I loath crowded cities and love small towns and villages, and b)I was introduced to India by fearless people who taught me to be careful, but never to be fearful.  And when I was in India on my own, I stayed with hosts who also exhibited no fear.  And as for the people we spoke to, their response was never anything but perfect hospitality.  The Indian attitude toward most encounters is to be polite and always non-confrontational, and visitors have to be extremely offensive and abrasive to raise their ire.  With these factors all in play, I'm never worried.

My biggest danger in India turned out to be...myself.  Come back tomorrow for the full story on how I woke up blind the next morning...

India, Day 3 - Touchdown.

Another ten hours on the plane, passed in movie-watching and broken only by a fitful, hour-long nap.  Like any other time one "tries hard" to sleep, REM was elusive. Finally, I landed in India.

With my one bag over my shoulder, I passed through customs, picked up my checked case and transferred to the domestic terminal.  I've only been doing this for a few years and am hardly an established veteran of Indian travel, but the amount of new development I see in New Delhi every year is unprecedented.  The area around the airport has more buildings and more points of interest every time I see it.  "Rising Elephant" for real.

Once in the terminal, my last flight came, and I went.  After forty-eight hours of travel, I arrived at my final destination.

My host picked me up at the airport, and we went back to the house where I would stay with him and his family for the rest of the week.  I was warmly welcomed in with a meal, and I wasted no time in falling down onto the bed they had set aside for me and sleeping off as much of the jet lag as I could before the next morning.  Our time together would be a whirlwind of paint and rain as we performed building maintenance and traversed the city during the monsoon storms.

India By the Numbers

8,252 miles

• Pensacola to New Delhi.

6 locations

• The number of unique places in India where I will serve.

3,375 miles

• Number of miles I will travel within India.

6 meters

• Lowest elevation I will visit.

2,205 meters

• Highest elevation I will visit.

1,028,610,328 souls

• Total population of India.

827,578,868 (80.5%)

• Hindu population.

138,188,240 (13.4%)

• Muslim population.

24,080,016 (2.3%)

• Christian population.

19,215,730 (1.9%)

• Sikh population.

7,955,207 (0.8%)

• Buddhist population.

4,225,053 (0.4%)

• Jain population.

6,639,626 (0.6%)

• Other religious affiliations.

727,588 (0.1%)

• Population of unstated religious affiliation.

There is work to be done.  It's wheels up for India in a matter of days.