There are times when even I scare myself with the way I walk in blind to international travel and today was one such day.
After 3 completely blissful days at The Oberoi Amarvilas looking out at the Taj Mahal it is time to return to Delhi.
The hotel kindly organised a car to the train and the train to Delhi. The porter escorted me to the station.
There is a 90 minute fast luxury train from Delhi to Agra but this train was not that.
It turns out that train is the Gatimaan express and it leaves from Delhi very early in the morning and returns late in the evening so tourists can take a one day trip to the Taj Mahal.
My train was a second class 3 hour trip with not a westerner insight and very few Indian women.
The heat was sweltering and the train air conditioning wasn’t turned on so everyone congregated on the platform waiting for it to turn on.
I had been assured by the porter that the train would honk twice before it left the station. It didn’t and as we waited the train started to leave the platform.
I had been happily chatting to an older married couple and the man twigged first to what was happening and we all ran for the train door.
I of course was the last on and carrying my hand luggage after having deposited my travel bag on the train earlier (lucky!).
It was two steep small steps to board a moving train. The lady grabbed my hand and on I went.
The train air conditioning didn’t kick in for another 20 minutes and by that time I was completely soaked through with sweat.
This train was worse than Italy’s Trenitalia and that’s a record difficult to beat in the world.
At the first stop a fellow male traveller hopped in to my compartment and promptly took off his smelly shoes. The air conditioning wasn’t strong enough to eradicate that smell.
The toilets were substandard and there was no drinkable water for a 3 hour journey and I had devoured 2 bottles of water in the first half hour of the trip.
On my doctors advice I had packed medications for my trip and fortunately I had some Staminade in my bag which I mixed with my remaining half bottle of water and sipped all the way to Delhi.
When my fellow traveler put his feet up on my sleeping bench my commitment to use a tour company and travel agent or just plan my travels better became a solid vow!
But the truth is with ‘The Oberoi experience’ I hadn’t really been experiencing the daily life of India.
That mission is now complete and will nor easily be experienced again.
From the train I got a first hand view of the slums of Delhi, the starving people and animals and the mountains of rubbish piled metres high. No food, sanitation or housing for miles and no way to change that for the people who live there.
It is impossible to imagine in the 21st century how so many people all over the world can be so dispossessed and denied the basic human rights of water, clean air, housing and education but they are in the billions. And India‘s slums are the poster child for this world.
Delhi has of course modernised and advanced but like Australia and most of the world the gap between the rich and poor is growing larger and more extreme.
I had organised transport from the train to the hotel and for my final day The Oberoi Delhi is to be my privileged safe haven till I return home. #lovestotravel
