Trains, trash, sanding tiles and eventual planes

A quick update: Alicia and I made it to Smelly New Delhi after a long day of train travel. We left beautiful-but-horn-filled Solan in the afternoon yesterday, having spent the previous night having delightful high tea, samosas and sweets with the Sharma's.

We wanted to take a taxi down from Solan to Kalka (which is where the 'real' trains start) but had a horrific time with the lazy, rude, and greedy taxi drivers in Solan. They tried to charge us at least 300 Rs. more than the normal fare and were incredibly unpleasant. We are both at our wits end (Alicia especially) with people trying to con us so this was really frustrating.

We knew the toy train was an option so we stopped at the train station and thankfully spoke with two very nice Indian Railways people and got tickets. On our return to the train station with our bags we caught a rickshaw with two guys in their early 20s who I think were super Indian metalheads (one was sporting a Slipknot tshirt). Unlike the taxi drivers they were exceedingly nice, charged us a fair price, and then asked for a photo when we got out. Those two were a welcome spot in my day after dealing with such unplesant people before.

The train ride down is long (about three hours vs. one by car) but super beautiful and thankfully there was lots of room in the car. I spoke for a while with a couple over University students from Chandigargh. Like the metalhead rickshaw driver-and-friend they were a nice reminder that the vast majority of Indians are nice and welcoming. However being tourists we often end up interacting with a bad lot while all the nice people are going about their day-to-day lives around us.

After a bit Alicia took a fake-travel-nap in the highly uncomfortable toy-train seats and I stood in the doorway watching the scenery go by. The doorway spot on Indian trains is the best. You can stand, feel the wind, poke your head out (always looking for what is coming down the track, though the toy train doesn't move more than 20 kph so its rather safe). The view from the train is always more interesting to me as trains bisect the scenery. You get to see in to buildings, neighborhoods, etc... vs. the front-door view from the road. All sorts of people are lined up or walking along the tracks. You can see daily life happening on the doorways and roofs of houses. Or you can see in to the back of a factory or warehouse while people are having a smoke. Its all quite interesting to me...

After picking up the 'big train', which was a special Shatabdi Express. This is excellent as it is basically the nicest type of train in India. You get lots of snacks, water, and a pseudo-dinner. Nice seats that recline and for your added pleasure people loudly adjusting their phone ring tones, men with headphones poorly singing along to songs, and rampant small children running up and down the length of the car screaming - their parents of course totally apathetic to the disturbance the kids are causing to the 50% of the passengers who are trying to sleep...

Our arrival to Delhi was as expected - hectic. At this point we were at least used to the intense chaos of the area around the train station at night and got to our hotel after a rather 'easy' (with huge bags) walk.

We are first thought our hotel, the Hotel Ajanta, was going to be quite nice, even if it was a bit expensive. Nice bathroom, AC, comfortable mattress... not all bad despite the lack of an outside window. But after some closer inspection we realized that the glass block divider of our hotel to the hallway also had wooden, uncloseable slats. This meant that acoustically, our room was IN THE HALLWAY. Where at 6:30am phones started ringing and an hour or two later men started inexplicably sanding tiles outside our door. The hallway is of course made of concrete and tile, so its an echo chamber that all pumped directly into our room and straight past my earplugs which had been forcefully (and vainly) re-inserted at 7:00am so I could try and sleep.

Once we gave up on sleep I was able to get us another windowless room without a direct acoustic coupling to the hallway. Though this room provided us with a smashed ant in the sheet.
We now only have one more night, which is good as we are both ready to escape New Delhi. We have a quick day of a couple errands and then keeping a low profile in our room.

Hopefully the AC will be working when we return (it wasn't when we left!).

The next update will hopefully be from Bangkok in our hopefully-to-be-swanky digs via the epic awesome help of our friend Rob.