We have decided to make a weekend trip to Darjeeling, to taste the tea and enjoy the mountain air. Now, I have organised trains in China, where no one speaks English, and we have passed across a scrap of paper with our train journey written on it in Chinese symbols, and trusted that we had the right train. I thought (naively) that, as a lot of Indians speak at least basic English, we would be fine. Not so. Here begins the saga of the train booking. Before I begin, I would like to reassure you that eventually we do get train tickets, but the journey acquiring them was longer than the 11-hour journey from Calcutta - Darjeeling that we will embark on tomorrow.
After trying to get onto the national train website ourselves, we fail miserably. We find a travel agent, and he tells us that the trains we want are fully booked, but we can get in on the 'foreign' quota, which is several beds reserved for foreigners. He nods enthusiastically at this forward thinking that India has adopted. He asks if England is that advanced. We hang our heads.
We have to visit the station the following day with a form and photocopies of our passports proving that we are foreign. He takes us through the form, and walks us to the station. He says that he is on holiday that weekend, and he can come with us. I say that we are fine on our own. He looks disappointed, but acquiesces. We wait for 40 minutes in a queue at the station, periodically being pushed in front of. Being British, we glare and say nothing. When we get to the counter, we are told that the station in Baruipur (the village we are staying in) is too small to issue foreign quota tickets, and so we cannot get that train. However, there are general tickets available for the return journey (and not the outward one) and Mr Man begins to book those. We stop him, saying we would like an entire journey. He shakes his head - this is not possible. We return to the travel agents.
We look for alternative trains which have space on the general quota. Mr Man's internet is painfully slow. He finds tickets in the RIC class, and joyfully points this out to us. We ask what RIC means. He answers, it is reservation in case of cancellation, and as these are RIC tickets, if 20 people cancel their tickets, then we get a space on the train! What a good system, is it not! India is very populated, and we need these measures. We say that actually, we would prefer actual tickets rather than standby tickets. His face falls. He turns back to the computer.
After about an hour, he finds a return journey that is over night, and an outward journey that is during the day, arriving at 10pm. We jump on this, saying it is perfect. He says we will have to find accommodation in New Jalipur for the first night. We are confused. Turns out that Darjeeling's nearest station is a three hour car journey from the train station, and no taxi driver will go that late. We will have to book a hotel, then travel in the morning. Not ideal, but we will do this. Before we head to the station to book again, I spot another journey, slightly later, that gets in at 5am instead. I ask if it has space. He laughs, and says I am intelligent. I think it is more common sense. We wait 5 painful minutes whilst the computer loads. It is. Indians get up at 5am, so we can get a taxi straight to Darjeeling, and we don't have to pay for an extra night accommodation, as we will sleep on the train. Perfect.
We rush to station. We get pushed in front of again, but we retaliate and push back. Eventually we get to the head of the queue, and I push our paper through the slot, narrowing missing the nose of the woman who we have been jostling with. She sighs. Our tickets are processed, and, joy of joys, our journey is booked!
