South Goa to Mumbai

We both enjoyed a lie in this morning, enjoying these really comfortable beds as we knew the following night we would spend on a night train. We were out of bed at 9am, the latest wake up time on our trip so far and made our way over to Palolem beach, a 10 minute walk from our hostel. The beach was huge, but quite crowded so we were both pretty happy that we decided to base ourselves in Patnem instead. We walked half-way along the beach and grabbed some veg noodles at a food vendor in a car park just off the beach for 80 rupees and then grabbed a 5L bottle of water to fuel us for the morning. We continued along Palolem beach reaching the island at the end that you could read at low tide, however the tide had already started to come in when we got there so we gave it a miss and decided to actually just head back to Patnem and enjoy our last beach day for a while there.

Back at Patnem we enjoyed the water, the sunshine and the peace for a little while (even though it was scorching hot) before I looked at our tickets for the upcoming train. I woke Tom from his doze to tell him the tickets for our trains tonight were actually waiting list tickets not actual tickets for the train. We’d not been told about any of this as we’d paid for the tickets a couple of days earlier. We were in a Pool Quota waiting list, and bottom of the pile for that. We did some googling and discovered we wouldn’t have beds on this 11 hour overnight train to Mumbai. This made us both so frustrated at how the Indian rail system works and how anybody actually gets anywhere! We decided that we’d go to the train station in Cancona early to see what we could do. Of course we still had time to have our favourite Thali from the Nepalese restaurant, so we devoured it for the last time and went to get ready at the hostel. We’d asked the guy earlier in the day if we could grab a quick shower before the train, but it was a different person manning the hostel this afternoon and he didn’t like the idea of it! This day was going from bad to worse! We eventually just decided to get a shower as the hostel was empty, and then set off on the walk to the train station via the ATM for some much needed cash. I only had 30 pence on me and Tom only had about £2...not quite enough to get us to Mumbai.

When we got to the station, there was a crazy guy there, either drunk or drugged up, causing trouble for everyone. The station master was armed with a big wooden bat if he started to kick off more...luckily the police were called and he was taken away. This left the station master to be barraged with questions by me about what all the different codes on tickets meant. Eventually it made sense (Indian sense) and we’d be refunded for the waiting list ticket but we’d have to buy a general class ticket if we still wanted to get to Mumbai tonight. We took a brave pill and got them , only £2.50 each, and awaited the arrival of the train, getting some snacks in the meantime. It hit 20:30 and we went up the platform where we’d been told the general carriages were and we both jumped on before the train had stopped to try and beat some of the locals on so we’d get a seat. It was immediately uncomfortable. Hard benches with a tiny amount of padding, racks above to store luggage where people were sat and very little air. We went for about an hour or so and stopped at some random station where they were selling chapattis and curry through the window of the train, so we grabbed one to share and it was actually pretty good. Once finished we noticed that other who had the same as us didn’t have the little bag or plate they were given. I went on the hunt for a bin but found none - a fellow passenger then motioned for us to just throw it out the window - something that I couldn’t imagine doing, but obviously normal for these guys...we just held onto it for a bin later.

About another hour later and we’d both tried to get some sleep with no luck, but at least we had some of our own space to move about and get comfy. This is when the whole night took a turn...we got to a station just before midnight and what felt like half the Indian population got into our carriage....we were in for a long night.Read more