Saturday, July 17, 2010

Yeh Mera India

Ever so often there will come along a really good reason for liking ye olde maadar-e-watan. They come far and few in between, for example you find reasons to like Sweden more often than you find reasons to like India.

But when they do come, it is bril. I would go so far as to say it is chelpark even. Be that as it may...

There is now a weekly train, 6687/6688 that connects Mangalore and Jammu Tawi, rejoicing in the dry sawdust like name Navyug Express. It plods for 67 hours over 3600 odd kilometres up and down the deathless vistas of the sub-continent etc. The timetable is magical. Thalassery, Tiruppur, Tirupati, Tenali, Sevagram, Faridabad, Tohana, Malerkotla, Phagwara, Tanda Urmar (!!) and Kathua all linked by one pantry car. And if that wasn't enough, one portion of the train actually starts in Tirunelveli and joins the mother ship at Soil Degradation, Tamil Nadu (also called Erode, sometimes).

The thought that someone from Kovilpatti may be booking a ticket to Kathua is giving me goosebumps this fine Saturday afternoon.

5 comments:

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

but are tickets available on said train? sometimes i feel i must invent a (or buy a) thing that can book train tickets for me. you are yet to provide me with that tutorial (and your password and login) on irctc.co.in

else its all very exciting and warms the cockles of ones hearts and home is where the hearth is and so on.

aandthirtyeights said...

http://swaroopmami.livejournal.com/3678.html

Aparna said...

I used to be a die-hard fan of Indian Railways. I was absolutely certain that it was the best way to get around.

I dont think it is 12 years in the US... I think it is just the fact of having to travel with an unruly 2 year old... I now find IR to be very inconvenient and unacceptably slow. At this point, I want to trains to leave a place at 8pm and reach the destination at 7am and not force me to enjoy a scenery. I cannot find any trains that ply between any useful points A and B with that schedule. With advancing family baggage and receding hairline any traveller slowly transforms into a tourist :)

If I get on in Pune in the evening (close to 8pm when the toddler will thankfully goto sleep), I cannot expect to be anywhere useful by the morning. Hell, I cant even get to Nagpur by day break!

In other words, I cannot use train as an alternative to a hotel room like my fellow families-on-road do night in and night out on little known Euro rail...

--RMan as Aparna

Aparna said...

I used to be a die-hard fan of Indian Railways. I was absolutely certain that it was the best way to get around.

I dont think it is 12 years in the US... I think it is just the fact of having to travel with an unruly 2 year old... I now find IR to be very inconvenient and unacceptably slow. At this point, I want to trains to leave a place at 8pm and reach the destination at 7am and not force me to enjoy a scenery. I cannot find any trains that ply between any useful points A and B with that schedule. With advancing family baggage and receding hairline any traveller slowly transforms into a tourist :)

If I get on in Pune in the evening (close to 8pm when the toddler will thankfully goto sleep), I cannot expect to be anywhere useful by the morning. Hell, I cant even get to Nagpur by day break!

In other words, I cannot use train as an alternative to a hotel room like my fellow families-on-road do night in and night out on little known Euro rail...

--RMan as Aparna

Ludwig said...

[kbpm] no (to tutorial). no (to username). no (to password).

[mami] :O omigawwwwdddd. the Swedes are like a 'sweet-dish' only.

my word verification says "subtla".