12.5.11 – Trains Indian-style (Calicut and Alappuzha, Kerala, India)

12.5.11 – Trains Indian-style (Calicut and Alappuzha, Kerala, India)

The station is seething with a solid mass of people, stalls selling popcorn, water, sweets, line the platform.  It’s 12.50 and its extremely hot.  Sweat pours off me, my clothes stick to my body everywhere.  Although we have left two large cases at the hotel, our pile of luggage is at least three times the size of anybody elses’s.  Two station assistants, red shirts and red cloths wound around their heads, have staggered in with it from the taxi outside.   

Bill has fallen into conversation with two Muslim lads, clad in white shirts, lungi, with round white crocheted prayer hats on their heads.  I can hardly breathe with the heat, and we have 45 minutes to wait for our train.  Molly on the other hand, is coping without apparent difficulty.  Catriona pours bottled water over her little red head to keep her cool, and she laughs and watches all the coming and going around her with fascination.  Molly has been a constant source of amazement and pride to us all.  At two and a half years old, she has coped with all the changes of venue, totally unfamiliar settings, heat and noise not just with stoicism but with actual enjoyment.  So long as she knows that mummy and daddy are there, she relishes all the new experiences this trip throws at her – a natural adventurer.  She sits in her car seat on long journeys of three or more hours, drinking in the coloured houses, palm trees, careering traffic, and she laughs, comments on what she sees, plays with Teddy and falls asleep.  She has been the delight of all our taxi drivers, who take sad farewells of her when they leave.  But now she has to go on this busy, chaotic train for five hours.  How will she cope? 

The train finally arrives.  It’s pale blue, somewhat battered outside, with a large green diesel engine.  Most of the carriages are not air conditioned, and have no window, just metal bars, like the buses.  Molly points and laughs.  People clamber in and pack themselves tight together for what is going to be a long, hot haul for them.  We have booked seats on the only air conditioned carriage, but we have to wait to board while the train is cleaned.  At last the door opens.  Our rescuers in the red shirts appear again through the milling crowds and load the heavy cases in, lofting them onto the chromium shelving above the brown leather seats.  The train is broad – wider rails that we have at home.  There are three wide, comfortable seats of one side of the aisle, two to the other.  Molly is delighted.  She wriggles around, plays with her drop down table, looks out of the window.  I flop into my seat, and breathe more easily in the air conditioning.   

The train sets off, rocking gently.  Like all Indian transport we have experienced, it takes much longer to get anywhere than we are used to. The trip to Alappuzha is only 250 kilometres (about 150 miles) but it will take five hours.  But it's very comfortable.  About every fifteen minutes, railway chaps come through the carriage, offering fizzy drinks and water for sale, fresh lime juice, samosas, biriyani in foil containers, chocolates, doughnut-shaped things which are slightly savoury and very nice.  We don’t buy anything except juice as, not knowing this would be available, we have brought the faithful standby of British travellers – the Almighty Sandwich, in this case peanut butter or jam.

On the lines

We pass through stations, platforms crowded with people.  People stroll across the tracks in front of the train.  They wander along the edges of the embankments, children in their arms, or piles of shopping, at times carried on their heads.  Here and there maintenance work on the line is underway, people digging and shovelling in the heat, not a hard hat or high-viz vest in sight.  

I settle down and enjoy the ride, but an anxiety is how will we know where to get off?  We know the name of the station, and only very roughly when it should arrive.  The few stations we stop at are marked with large yellow and black signs, but it’s easy to miss them as there are not very many.  My fellow passenger in the next seat gets off and another gets on.  He’s a smart business man, and is soon talking on his mobile in fluent English.  When the call ends, I grasp my opportunity and ask how far it is to Alleppey (the station for Allapuzha) and which station precedes it.  He tells me, and advises us to get our luggage ready as the train leaves the station before ours.  I tell Bill, who is now in conversation with a civil engineer who has spent time in the UK and thought it was just fine, so long as you could sit right beside a central heating radiator.  I told him I felt much the same about the air conditioning here.

Alleppey Station

The station arrives, and we tumble out, making a mountain of our luggage on the busy platform.  I attempt to find the driver who is to meet us – I have his phone number but as he does not speak English it’s proving a little difficult to locate him.

Meanwhile Catriona has got into conversation with an English girl – the first white face we have seen in eight days, the last being a German girl who came through immigration with us at the airport when we arrived.  Contrary to my expectations, this has not bothered me at all, probably because of the kindness and friendliness of the Indian people we have met.  Also, I quite like the 'papparazzi effect' occasioned because we look so different in colour, dress and behaviour.

At last I find Udayan, our driver.  His car is minute.  I point to the luggage, and despair.  ‘No problem, no problem’ he keeps saying and, sure enough, a few moments later, we set off, wedged into the seats, Molly as usual delighted and sitting on Daddy’s knee, our luggage towering and swaying on top as we negotiate the bumpy, twisty road.  It’s not a long journey to our hotel, which turns out to be a great, comfortable hotel with Mr. Kumar, a kind English speaking manager, who at once takes us under his wing and goes to great lengths to look after us, charmed of course by Molly.  And so we settle in for the night, taking it in turns to dine out in the restaurant, and packing our overnight bags for tomorrow’s adventure on the Kerala Backwaters.