{"id":56,"date":"2008-12-22T19:33:15","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T02:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/?p=56"},"modified":"2008-12-22T19:33:15","modified_gmt":"2008-12-23T02:33:15","slug":"the-train-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/the-train-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"The train of death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Indian railway system employs a whoping 1.5 million people.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s the 2nd greatest employer in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 At a glance, it looks like a chaotic excuse to trample passangers, but behind the scenes things are surprisingly well run.<\/p>\n<p>The 12 hour journey to Varanasi was surreal to say the least.\u00c2\u00a0 I can honestly say it&#8217;s the closest (I hope) I&#8217;ll ever be to\u00c2\u00a0sleeping in\u00c2\u00a0jail (without all the raping and with slightly worse bathrooms).\u00c2\u00a0 There are various classes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First come, first served, concentration camp style, cargo, get out or get stampeeded&#8211; literally.\u00c2\u00a0 This option is not available to foreigners as far as I can tell, and is hardly different than hitchiking on an empty trailer with 200 other people.<\/li>\n<li>2nd class\/sleeper.\u00c2\u00a0 95% of people travel here.\u00c2\u00a0 Six dirty bunk beds to a few square feet.\u00c2\u00a0 No bedding.\u00c2\u00a0 No AC.\u00c2\u00a0 No heater.\u00c2\u00a0 We used this option.<\/li>\n<li>3 A\/C.\u00c2\u00a0 The middle class of traveling options.\u00c2\u00a0 Clean sheets, actual padding on the beds.<\/li>\n<li>2 A\/C. Upper middle class.<\/li>\n<li>First class.\u00c2\u00a0 Posers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A few hours into our journey I was having serious regrets about submitting Yano to this, but she seemed to be taking it in stride&#8211; smiling throughout, and falling asleep within 4.5 minutes of departure.\u00c2\u00a0 We met a Kuwaiti immigrant, an Afghani who I had to help find his seat, and a million staring Indians.\u00c2\u00a0 Needless to say, we didn&#8217;t see any tourists.<\/p>\n<p>Dheeraj had warned me that not even he traveled in sleeper class.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to see it for myself.\u00c2\u00a0 He was right.\u00c2\u00a0 We should&#8217;ve booked 3AC.<\/p>\n<p>When we got to Varanasi we met a couple Aussie backpacker girls who had taken a 16 hour similar journey and were doing back-to-back 12 hour over night trains: sleeper class.\u00c2\u00a0 I felt like a wuss, having thought of signing up for 1st class for our next leg.\u00c2\u00a0 In my defense, I thought the odds of getting sick were highly in our favor&#8230; that is, until we saw the Ganges river, and realized what a treat the train ride had been&#8230; but I&#8217;ll leave that story for our next post.\u00c2\u00a0 In the meantime, I&#8217;ve uploaded more pictures at the same address, and will continue to do so throughout.<\/p>\n<p>Time for some curried pancakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Indian railway system employs a whoping 1.5 million people.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s the 2nd greatest employer in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 At a glance, it looks like a chaotic excuse to trample passangers, but behind the scenes things are surprisingly well run. The 12 hour journey to Varanasi was surreal to say the least.\u00c2\u00a0 I can honestly say &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/the-train-of-death\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The train of death<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}