An Indian train journey

After seeing The Darjeeling Limited I was desperate to experience a train trip in India - without the on-the-loose snake. Like a few of my expectations on this trip, there was more movie than reality. The train from Chandigarh to New Delhi is called the Rajdhani-Shatabdi Express but the exotic name does not translate into an authentic experience. Parts of India are just too damn modern. The template for this fast, efficient, comfortable train is pretty much shared by those on the London-to-Bristol and Brisbane-to-Ipswich lines.

For 262km we sped to Delhi and the only noticeable difference was the industrious service of the overworked waiters, who serve about four courses. I haven’t had a cooked meal on a train since the 28hr journey on the Sunlander from Brisbane to Cairns as a teenager. On the Bullet Train between Tokyo and Kyoto lunch was a plastic box full of I’ll-never-know-what while the Eurostar to Paris was cold meat and red wine.

On the track to Delhi it’s dal, paneer, rice and roti. It smelt okay but I’d eaten late and after seeing old food on my spoon I was a bit wary of the rest. I’m trying not to be a delicate Westerner, but after a few days of upset stomach I feel a bit like a delicate Westerner.

The nice guy next to me thought the meal was delicious, licking every finger a couple of times. For health reasons, I’ve given up chewing my nails for five weeks – to me it’s as addictive as nicotine and just writing this makes me want to hack into my overgrown claws – so as I tried not to watch my heart tightened in envy and my stomach started to gurgle in anticipation of an imminent evacuation.

In The Darjeeling Limited Owen Wilson’s character joins his two siblings – as well as a harassed personal assistant – as they try to rekindle their brotherly love while finding themselves and their mother. They journey for days, stopping for tea, markets, faux prayers and fights with the train steward. It’s a bit hard to match that in a four-hour journey on what feels like a commuter service, so I didn’t try.

Due to a morning of unavoidable administrative jobs I stepped on to the train just after dusk. A trip back to the SIM card-watch shop was necessary as the officious people at Airtel don’t think my home address in Australia exists. Three lines of official description and a postcode is not enough, and they still weren’t convinced when I added in “third street on the left after the swimming pool”. So I’ll have a different number and network in Delhi.

Instead of seeing desert and hundreds of people and having cups of tea handed in through the train windows, I got lots of orange lights and kilometres of shadows. They were nice shadows, not the kind to be jumping at. But I can’t tell you what’s it’s like between Chandigarh and Delhi. Next time I’ll do it in daylight.

The highlight of the trip was the squawking bird cacophony at the station in Chandigarh. Louder than the crowds at Mohali, it was overwhelming initially but provided me never-before-heard background music to a 30-minute wait. How such tiny animals can make so much noise, I’m not sure. I was scanning for an escaped snake, but that sort of thing only happens in the movies.