On our journey of 14.000 kms we used train-like vehicles only twice: first the suburban railway out from Budapest, second also a suburban railway out from Istanbul. But now! We took trains from Delhi to Agra (~3 hours), from Agra to Delhi (~3 hours) and from Delhi to Mumbai (~20 hours), so even though we didn't get really experienced Indian train travellers, but at least we had our try.
In India there are basically 7 classes on trains, ranging from the cheapest-dirtiest to the very expensive-very comfortable. These are approximately:
- 1AC: The most expensive stuff. You get a small room with a sink, bed and sheets, air conditioning and 1 or 3 roommates.
- 2AC: This isn't cheap either. Here you are four people in your "compartment" which is not a real "compartment" as it doesn't have a door. The arrangement of the seats is like on the 1AC, but no door here, and as the train is wider than in Europe, so there is space for another seat/bed on the other side of the aisle. And the seats are convertible to beds so you can sleep too. The arrangement is a bit hard to explain and it's even harder to make good photos of it because of the lack of space.
- 3AC: Still air conditioned car, same as 2AC, but here there are 3 bunks of beds.
- AC Chair: A normal air-conditioned seater car, just like the Intercity trains in Europe. No beds here, but still fairly clean.
- Sleeper: So this is the clear sleeper class. 3 atop each other like 3AC (but no A/C here). Gets wet frequently when it's raining outside, but the beds are plastic-covered so at least you can wipe them off easily. The picture here was taken from the aisle. There are 1+1 beds on the left. The lower one can be converted to 2 seats: those are the ones where the guys are sitting. On the right hand side is like "compartments" (without doors) with 3-tier beds. The lower beds can be used as 3+3 seats.
- 2nd class reserved: you are guaranteed to get a seat, even if it's not very comfy. And this is really cheap.
- 2nd class unreserved: If you are unlucky not to get a seat, you must stand or sit in the aisle/luggage space. Or hanging on the side of the train, so as you manage. This class is technically for free.
Well, these are the varieties. And the differences in price are so huge that a trip costing $10 in 1AC costs about 50 cents in 2nd unreserved.
We took a Sleeper to Agra as all the other tickets had been sold out. You must buy your tickets in advance here: sometimes tickets get sold out even a month before. (Why don't they start more trains?) Also a Sleeper back to Delhi, then from Delhi to Mumbai we took an AC Chair car. In the office they told us to forget the char car for a 16 hours trip as there we don't get a bed. We told them about our 3 day bus journey through Pakistan, after that they believed we didn't mind sitting 16 hours on a trains.
We had mixed experiences. The train was spacious, comfortable, but on the other hand, there was hardly any space for the bags. I found some good company and had a nice chat with the Indian people around, while Judit sat at the open door of the train and watched the people shitting by the tracks and bringing their garbage there. She said literally everyone from the slums came by the tracks to do their business. She even saw a child pooping down from the top of a concrete wall :) And the whole place stank very bad. Of course, the whole thing is understandable: millions of people live in the nylon-roofed "houses" which usually don't have walls and are basically made of garbage. They certainly don't have toilets, so what can they do, right?
In Agra we checked out the Taj Mahal and we took some nice pics of it, we had a nice place 200m away from the Taj Mahal, with a terrace having a straight look on the building! We made a rickshaw race (we didn't want to get into any rickshaws because we wanted to walk, so two rickshaw drivers just started coming after us and competing for us, the price went down to 60 then to 20 rupees. In the end, after ten minutes we got into one of them, but the whole situation was awkward, we even crossed the road to get rid of them, but they didn't mind it, they came after us, bargaining with us while driving the wrong way :), we went to a Buddhist temple to see strangely shouting people and the such. Basically, Agra wasn't a bad place.
Then we had to go back to Delhi to change trains, and we headed to Mumbai! (Or "Bombay", as they say it here, even though the official name of the city was changed a long time ago)
Before arriving there, our new friends on the train gave us various pieces of good advice: where to go, where not to go, where to find a cheap place to stay etc. Bombay is a big city: about 150 kms long, has a population of 16 million, lays by the sea, the inner part is basically an island. 60% of this 16 million live in slums, in the nylon-covered little dwellings I mentioned earlier. The other 40% lives with better circumstances but the really rich can be as little as 2-3%, maximum. Bollywood, the city-in-the-city, which is responsible for more than half of the world's annual movie production, also resides in Bombay, so most of the movie stars of India live here. The south of Mumbai is the cool place, here is the Taj Hotel (sleep here for one night and pay $500, but homeless people sleep for free 20m from the building, and you can find a slum 500m away which looked so bad we didn't dare to go inside), and a big financial district, with the central offices of all Indian banks.
We found some amazing architecture in the financial district, beautiful old houses serving as the central buildings of banks. If I was an architect I shat myself right there, like this I was just very-very impressed.
We slept one night there as we couldn't find any really cheap accommodation (but at least we had a window in our room looking at the sea). In the evening we went out partying, we met a helicopter mechanic and a submarine-driver, we had some beers and gin, then in the night they took us to a place to have some tandoori chicken :) And the next day we got up with a quite unexpected hangover and hopped on the first afternoon bus heading to Goa. I'll write about our adventures in Goa soon. Goa is one of the best places on Earth :)
Oh, and at the time we were leaving Bombay, there was a festival (Ganesh Chaturthi), which caused our bus to wait hours in the traffic, but in turn we saw some pink party people:
