Ever Ridden a Toy Train?

Anyone that has ridden the Kalka-Shimla train can tell you that it is literally a toy. The guage is 2' 6" (not even a metre) and with six cars and an engine, it's not even 30 metres long. I think the cars were barely taller than me (I'm 1.83 metres or 6') and each one was meant to seat 18 ("meant" being the operative word).

The journey is 95.5 km, passes through 102 tunnels (the longest being over a kilometre), and winds its way up from about 600 metres to 2000 metres. It takes 5 hours going up and 6 hours coming down...go figure.

Instead of reserving a seat, I decided to go for the "first come, first served" variety. That's what a local would do, right? I left the house at 4 AM to see if I could catch the 5:30 train and watch the sunrise. I figured that I would have a seat and be able to enjoy the view. Wow, was I wrong. I show up, pay 37 rupees ($1 CDN), and find myself wedged into a car with 25 or so other locals. I could see them thinking, "what's this guy doing in this class?"

So instead of getting that comfy seat, I'm sitting on a metal floor, leaning against the bathroom door. Too bad because I was on the wrong side and missed the sunrise completely. For the next two hours, I sat...taking pictures every so often. At this one stop, a local calls to me from outside, "What on earth are you doing? Come with me." So we go to the "reserved cabins" and i sit down on a nice seat and spend the rest of the 3 hours taking pictures...I was happy for that because there were some spectacular shots.

Coming back was a slightly different story. After meeting people from AIESEC Hungary (I felt like such a local giving them directions), I bought my "first come, first served" ticket and tried to find a space to squeeze into. One thing I noticed was that the car, and the whole train, was a little bit more packed than on the way up. I felt like a sardine in a can. In this 18-person car, there were at least 45 people. I counted 27 from what I could see and that was only half of the car.

I started by standing, then I found some room to sit down, then these two Indian guys that couldn't stop laughing told me to lay down in sort of a reclining position (will post a picture soon). So there I was, leaning against a bag with my head on some guys knees, with the entire population of the train laughing at me. I was amazed at how comfortable it was. My next position was on the knees of the two guys mentioned earlier. Then I got a seat for about twenty minutes. With four hours to go, I moved to the edge of a single seat that already had someone on it. I maybe at 4 inches to work with and not a lot of leg room.

To kill those four hours, I basically just said the names of dishes that I liked here. These two locals and I just laughed back and forth, even though I only knew like 10 Hindi words and they knew about 10 English words. Definitely a true Indian experience.