India - Jan/Feb 2025

13:00
One train journey, as it turns out, is all it needs to restore largely my faith in the India I travelled through in 2007. But we’ll get to that…

I manage to sleep pretty well. I’m awake a touch before my alarm, but not disastrously so. I’m up and packed pretty quickly. There’s some small confusion when I get two different messages from ‘my driver’ for the journey to Pernem station, but I suspect there’s a gremlin in the Indian administrative machine. My ‘actual’ driver knocks dutifully on my door just before 09:00 to let me know he’s arrived, and I dutifully trot downstairs with my various bags a few minutes later.

The journey to Pernem takes maybe 40 minutes. I spend most of it saying goodbye to Goa. I’m sad to leave. I’d forgotten just how much I love this tiny Indian state. I/we WILL be back, for sure, and more quickly than the 12 year gap since our last visit.

Pernem station is a small, provincial station, certainly compared to the other junctions from which I’ve joined trains in the past month. We’re only 50 miles up the track from Margao, where the train originated. Despite this, the train is running late. It’s 45 minutes late leaving Margao - which coincidentally was only a 20 minute drive from where we were based in Patnem. I keep an eye on progress on the Indian Railways app, which is woefully slow to update. It matters not. I’m perfectly content sitting and reading my book until the train eventually arrives…

A weirdness of booking my trains a couple of months in advance is that I don’t know where my berth is. The train lists are typically written up just before the train departs, and the IRCTC (Indian Railway) website hasn’t had time to update with my specifics. I jump on board the train, and spend 15 minutes interrogating pretty much any passerby as to whether they know where I should be. I’m in the right carriage, but beyond that, I’m clueless. A guard finally takes pity on me, and shows me to my berth. It’s a 4 seater - similar to the one I travelled to Nagpur in from Agra. It features the same rock solid seating, so there’s that.

As I stow my bags, it’s occupied by one other passenger, who quickly introduces himself as Denzil. We exchange pleasantries while the train is waiting to depart. It’s only after we’ve left the station that he conspiratorially asks me if I drink beer. I’m not 100% sure what’s going on, but I say yes - beer is my favourite. He rustles around in his rucksack, and finally emerges with a bottle of Kingfisher Ultra. He says it’s not that cold, so needs drinking quickly. I respond in the affirmative.

With this friendship gesture behind us, we sit and chat contentedly for the next two hours. He’s 64, lives near Mumbai, and is on his way back to Mumbai from Kerala, where he’s been visiting his sister. We talk architecture, the change in Indian attitudes over the past 20 years, and cricket. About halfway through our chat, he passes me a second beer. It transpires he is diabetic, so has to avoid beer. I ask if that means he avoids alcohol completely, and he laughs the laugh of the demented. He passes me a plastic bottle in a black plastic bag. I sniff it. FENI.

I cannot express strongly enough how much this smell brings back a mishmash of pleasant and unpleasant memories. Feni is poison - literally in some cases. It takes the worst of moonshine tradition, and blends it with shonky hygiene and even worse taste. It smells and tastes rank. Its alcohol content is somewhere between 30 and 70%. Even the producer of the Feni can’t tell you exactly… I first tried it on my 30th birthday, and fell off my chair. To be fair, I’d been drinking reasonably heavily all day, but the Feni quickly and violently finished me off. Denzil offers me a swig, and I refuse, in the most polite but firm terms possible.

At one of our scheduled stops, Denzil slips one of the chai boys 100 rupees, and he (the chai boy) returns with a small bottle of local brandy, called Honey Bee. It transpires there’s quite the racket going on. India trains are meant to be dry, but are anything but. On my very first train from Mumbai to Goa in 2007, my colleagues and I bribed the guard to let us smoke in our compartment. It cost us maybe £2, and the guard didn’t even stop to think about it. It’s a very civilised form of travel.

Denzil is incredibly sweet. When the lunch guy comes around asking for out options, he orders for me (asking whether I want veg or non-veg), and asks for tourist spicy. He doesn’t check any of this with me, obviously. I think he’s quietly and slowly adopting me. He says I must message him when I arrive in Mumbai, as he would love to host me for dinner at his house.

To be clear, we have another 7 hours to go until we arrive into Panvel, where both of us will depart the train. I’m a little concerned about what he’ll be trying to offer me by the time we actually get there…

17:05
My 4 berth compartment is now full. It’s 17:00 in the afternoon, and everyone is sleeping but me. Good old Denzil is snoring away on the other lower berth, opposite me. He’s wearing a piece of clothing called a lungi - think a sarong and you won’t be a million miles away. It’s worn by many men and women in India, and I’ve always wondered whether it’s like a kilt - i.e. sans underwear underneath it.

Well, wonder no more. I currently have a less than ideal view of Denzil’s bum, winking at me across the compartment. His lungi has ridden up while he’s sleeping, and all modesty has been abandoned.

The hours since I boarded have passed incredibly easily. Lunch was brought around 14:30. A very tasty and hot vegetable biryani. It transpires that Denzil was NOT asking for tourist spicy earlier. He was saying that I don’t need tourist spicy - that I’ll be ok with whatever heat they bring. I am, but only just. I feel pin-pricks of sweat on my forehead and upper lip after just a few mouthfuls.

Around 15:00, we’re joined by a young lady, who immediately takes to the top bunk, and falls asleep. Another 40 minutes pass, and we’re joined my a middle aged gentleman, who immediately takes to the other top bunk, and falls asleep.

I’m momentarily tempted to sleep, but the bench is pretty uncomfortable. I’m also not down on sleep, so don’t really feel the need. Instead, I zone out, and watch the world go by…

20:30
Arriving into Panvel is quite the head-fuck. The station itself is utter chaos. It’s clearly a big junction station, with 12 platforms. It’s hugely crowded as a result, I learn, of the many people who live here and commute daily into Mumbai for work. There are about seventeen exits, and my driver, whose English is slightly worse than is absolutely ideal, is waiting at one of them. It takes a good 20 minutes to work out which one, and locate him.

We jump into the car, and he tells me it’s a roughly 90 minute drive up to Matheran. This is within expectations. I knew at the outset that today was gonna feel like a very long travel day. My remaining journeys will feel brief by comparison.

The roads out of Panvel echo the train station. Chaos and carnage, with just a dash of crazy. We’re on the highway towards Pune, and it’s fully 30 minutes before we get out of 2nd gear. I can’t see the surrounds too well in the dark, but I get the sense that Panvel is quite an industrial city. The train passed some pretty full-on works on the way into the city. In the dark, all I can see are hulking shadows denoting where the giant buildings are hiding….

23:15
It’s possible I may have made a small error in judgement. When my good friend Manas recommended a trip to Matheran, I gladly accepted his advice, booked a train ticket and a guesthouse, and didn’t really think much about it again until a few days ago.

It transpires that Matheran is a combustion engine free zone. In fact, no cars at all are allowed into the town. The only vehicles you’ll see are electric tuk-tuks. Now, my cab from Panvel was, I thought, going to take me all the way to my hotel. No. Oh no. No no no. We get stopped at the bottom of a mountain, and are told that I must take a different taxi up to the top, at a cost of 500 INR. Righto. I’ll wrangle with the cab company tomorrow - right now, I just wanna get to my hotel, and get my head down for some sleep.

The guy then drops me about halfway up the mountain. Apparently, even he’s not allowed past this point. I have to walk 5 minutes into the darkness, and then get one of the e-tuks up to my guesthouse. It is at this point that the cell service drops out.

I wait patiently at the e-tuk stand. There are a few young Indian lads sitting nearby. I approach, and ask what’s what. They tell me that the e-tuks stop running at 22:00. It is 21:58. I ask whether it’s likely another one will be along, and… I get an Indian head wobble. I push, I say that I’m actually going to need a verbal response. I get a ‘probably’ and sigh deeply.

Ten minutes later, a tuk-tuk appears in the distance, heading towards us. My hopes soar. My new friend Santosh waves the tuk-tuk driver down, and asks whether he’ll take me to my guesthouse. He’d apparently been planning to head home. He acquiesces, but there's a price. Of course there is…

We ride a further 3-4km up the mountain, and pull up at a cab stand. My driver points me further down the road, and tells me it’s another 7-8 minute walk. I dutifully don my various rucksacks and bags, and head into the distance. 12 minutes later, I’m beginning to doubt myself. I’ve walked past any semblance of a ‘town centre’ and appear to be exiting Matheran. I look at my phone, which has turned into an expensive and useless brick. I ask at a little street shack, and am met with blank stares. I ask one of the dogs running up and down the street, and am met with a bark. There’s one building that’s got lights on, up a few stairs from the street. I start up them, in the hope of finding someone that can direct me. I ask the security guard where Adamo is, and he looks at me like I’m an idiot. It turns out that this is the guesthouse I seek.

Check-in is blissfully quick, and I’m shown to my room. It’s very pleasant, but all I can think about is my bed. It’s been a 14 hour travel day today, and I’m feeling every single minute of it.Baca lagi