So as I write this part of this blog, I am at hour 37 of the train ride from Amritsar to Siliguri in the New Bengal province – a more than 1,800-kilometer journey that has taken me very near some of the locations where the Buddha roamed some 2,600 years ago – places I intend to visit in the near future.
So if the train had followed its schedule, I would probably be settling in at Darjeeling at this point, but at last estimate, we were at least six hours behind schedule. I think we are even further behind at this point. I don’t really expect to be in Siliguri before 2nor 3 a.m. at this point and it looks like I will spend the remainder of the night in a rail or bus station. The proprietor of the homestay I booked for the night indicated I should be catch a bus first thing in the morning.
I do have faith the journey will end at some point, but it has definitely been a lot to bite off on my first ever train tip.
I am not sure exactly what caused the delays on this trip, but we keep stopping at small stops and not moving for a half hour or more at times.
There was one incident in which the train stopped in the middle of nowhere and there was a reported fire. We scrambled to get our bags off the train but by the time we had gotten down onto the tracks, we learned it was not an actual fire. As best I understand it, apparently the train had hit something and it caused the wheels to start smoking.
My Hindi is still not food and none of the other passengers speak much in the way of English. I have a woman named Mala Singh sitting across the berth from me. She is very nice but she speaks almost no English. From what we have exchanged, she has told me she is age 45 and a mother of three with children, ages 22, 25 and 28. She lives in the town of Champanagar, where her father was a doctor to a member of the aristocracy.
We are still at least a few hours from her stop at Katihar and it is another three hours from there on towards Siliguri.
At least this train trip has given me the opportunity to put together this set of blogs and reflections on my time in Dharamshala and Amritsar. And although it has not been super easy on my body, it has not been boring either.
I’m sure there will be more trains in store. Especially as I start following the Buddha’s path.
I probably won’t check in much for the next week as I will be on the trek. Wishing all my readers the best.