Delhi to Amritsar

Up at 0600 for our train to Amritsar that leaves at 0720. I had checked how long it took to the train station, just 6 minutes by foot, and checked the security, only minor queues. So what could go wrong? Well, it's not wrong, but baffling is the station announcement board. It's an old style large board. It runs slowly in English and Hindi through all the morning trains. Finally we see our train. It says “D01”. Ok, but what does that mean? We ask some people who seem to have no clue, so we pass through the security in a couple of minutes. We are on platform 1. I open the app to see if it tells us more, and some lady tells us to find the train number. But shit the app won’t work. (It worked OK, even with a poor signal in Namibia), but here in the main train station in Delhi, it doesn’t!). So I look up emails and find a train number. A helpful porter takes us to platform 5. Now the app works again. Which carriage? E2. This train does not look right, so I show the porter the train number again. Ah, that is platform 1! (where we started). So we all traipse back to platform one and get on our train, in the right carriage, and in the right seats.
I knew you could order food on Indian trains, but I did not know you could also have breakfast, lunch, or dinner at your seat. We were in the process of ordering lunch via the app, when a steward asks us if we want breakfast, but that is 175Rupees extra each (€2.20). Hmm, maybe not a bad idea for the kids, so we ordered 4. We will try the app for food later. That has a huge variety on offer. It works, such that provided you order an hour in advance, the food will be brought to you at the next train stop. You can order up to 1000Rupee (€13) and pay cash. In India you get a lot of food for that amount. Roughly enough for 3 or 4 people.

The train is perfectly OK , even if the description 1st class is a stretch. We arrive 30 mins late, mostly because just before arrival, the train stops and doesn't move for nearly 20 minutes.

We meet our pre-arranged driver, Manpreep, without a problem despite his description being a bit vague, "red turban under the flag of India." Two problems (1) There are two flags (2) Red turbans are rather common in Punjab. Nevertheless, with Whatsapp, we find Manpreet. Big surprise, he does not have a car, he has a touk touk, but it's adapted with two rows of seats and a roof rack for luggage. With our luggage, we all fit.

Later, it's clear that a touk touk made sense since cars aren't allowed in the narrow streets of the old city. 25-minute ride cost $4. Not bad.

Our hotel is called Heaven View, because if we were 15m tall, we would have a good view of heaven ( the golden temple). At least it's correct that we are really close to the temple. Certainly less than 100m. Czytaj więcej