'We've Gone on Holiday by Mistake!'

Friday 16th May

- the journey to Kota
- a tale of two tickets
- frustration and irritation
- the beginning of one of the worst journeys of our lives

as you may have guessed from all of that, decidedly not our best day of the trip, and consequently bereft of any photographs. but do stay with it, the tale itself has more than enough colour and incident. and do we laugh about it now? no.

for a change, a day's journey did not begin with a dawn start. a shower, tea and a sit on the swing were instead our morning's strenuous activities. we checked out - still the only guests - and our total rent, food and drink bill for four nights cost almost nothing in Western terms and was cheap even by Indian standards. it was a real shame to be leaving Raj, Neema and their lovely and adventurous daughter. it would be lovely to see them again and to find out how their guesthouse had progressed.

Raj sees us off from his new balcony

aiming to get to the bus stand in the South of the town, we had only gone a few yards when we bumped into Raj, our tour guide of yesterday. he took us and our bags by rickshaw down to the bus stand for a good price and told us where to go next. we had barely bought our tickets - a princely R21 for a 45-60 minute hour journey - before our state bus arrived and we just about squeezed in right at the back. we were on our way. this was all too easy!

the journey to Kota was a largely forgettable one for its simplicity and uneventful duration. as we neared Kota, the scenery changed from agricultural to industrial. we crossed the wide but mostly dry Chambal River to an extraordinarily grim backdrop of what is claimed to be Asia's largest fertiliser plant, a gargantuan beast of multiple legs, protruding chimneys and stacked structures, the sort of place you might go to destroy the One Ring. Kota also boasts hydro-electric projects and a huge nuclear plant, so big, grim and industrial go well together here. after the small town feel and tranquillity of Bundi, it was a bit of a shock to be somewhere nudging 700,000 residents.

disembarking, we trudged off in the not inconsiderable midday heat to find the tourist information office for details of alternate coach or bus journeys to Ahmedabad, decidedly our second best option after our half-chance train. we walked longer than we wanted to with our packs on and took a few wrong turns, but we got there eventually. the people we passed almost all said 'Hi,' with many waving to the strangers around these there parts - we had read that Kota was somewhat off the tourist trail, and the reactions we got seemed to confirm that. the information centre was staffed by a helpful man who spoke good English and made a few phone calls on our behalf - a first! he said that it was highly unlikely that our train's waiting tickets would come through, so our best bet was to cancel them at Kota station and get a sleeper bus reservation. he rang ahead to (his mates?) Shree Nath tours, located relatively nearby, and pencilled us in. he was responsive and did do his best for us, nice man.

we walked probably the same distance again back in the direction we'd come and found the tour agent, an awning in front of a shop on what may have been the busiest, noisiest roundabout in India. the polite but officious man behind the desk took our request, order and money for a 10pm departure in quick succession, his phone rarely stopping its incessant ringing. we managed to cross the road without dying and caught a rickshaw to the railway station, which turned out to be a most unexpectedly long distance away. the journey was full of the usual head-worrying bumps for Edd, the only bonus being that Kota's rickshaws seem to be larger than others we've seen, if not actually any taller.

our problems began at the station. when we finally got to the correct counter queue and were served, after numerous jobsworths had told us they couldn't help or completely ignored us when we were asking them questions from a distance of one foot. the lady who saw us was very surprised that we thought that we were on the waiting list, since our tickets had now been confirmed. it was a quicker and more comfortable ride than a bus, but we were quite thrown by the 'highly unlikely' option now being on, especially after we'd just spent a fair amount of money on alternate transport. a little confused, we jumped back into our waiting rickshaw with two sets of tickets and went half of the way back into town to find lunch at a hotel recommended in the guidebook.

the posh-looking Navrang Hotel did not have internet access but it did have a restaurant, replete with large numbers of bored staff and the odd scurrying mouse. it had drinks and rather expensive lemon sodas, fruit cocktails that had the pink pineapple and cherry combination that only comes straight out of a can, and a 'club sandwich' that was three pieces of toasted stale bread containing tinned pineapple and a suggestion of cheese. it was unsurprisingly tasteless and crap. the toilets had hand basins jetting out water the temperature of molten lead. Edd thought that a refund on the coach tickets might be prudent, but Philippa was adamant that we should keep both sets of tickets, to be on the safe side.

we had some time to kill before our 6pm train and set off to find the internet; surely that wouldn't be difficult in a city this big? some time later, and we were still wandering leaden-footed around Kota with our packs trying to find one. directed down two side streets to a cyber cafe after what seemed like an age, we found several cube spaces shoehorned into a tiny front room of which Edd and our packs took up approximately a third of the space. there was only one cubicle available, so Philippa did still more train searching and tried to ignore the man next to her chatting live online to some webcam harlot. in a public cyber cafe. the manager insisted that Philippa have her passport scanned due to government regulations that we know do technically exist for foreigners using the net, but insisted Phil pay for it! the whole process was so laborious and vexing that Edd declined the offer of an available computer altogether and we left as soon as we could.

annoyed, hot and bothered, we caught another rickshaw back to Kota station early, as we were rapidly going off the city. once there, we finally found a copy of and bought the timetable bible Trains at a Glance after several towns' worth of shoulder shrugs, Philippa also picking up yet another book. we camped in the retiring room for a while on a welcoming bench, the large waiting area filled with families, travellers and many people sprawled asleep. it looked and sounded to us like the man on the floor next to us had consumption. small children kept us entertained with their antics while we wrote or read. when the mother of two of them asked her husband for some help with the bags while she took them to the toilet, one didn't need to be fluent in Hindi to understand that he had said, 'what do you expect me to do about it? you're the woman. it's your job.' the restrooms did have toilets and showers but resembled special breeding grounds for unusually virulent bacteria. Edd got talking to one jovial chap who may have been Nepalese. we'd just found out that our train was now an hour late. he had good English and asked where we'd been in India so far. we spoke about the trains; he laughed and proclaimed, 'India is rubbish!'

even though it was now an hour to wait until our train arrived, we went to the platform anyway. Kota is a large interchange and a very busy place indeed. the station was being vigorously cleaned (cows excepted) by rapidly moving teams of staff. even beggars were thin on the ground, the presence of armed railway security with sub-machine guns acting as an effective deterrent; one stern word from them would cause alms-seekers to promptly vanish. we bought provisions for the long journey ahead from a man who cleaned us out for change because he told us that he had none, before throwing our money into a drawer groaning with small denomination notes. a dog and accompanying cloud of flies decided to sit under our bench; no matter how many times we shooed it away, we'd look down later to discover it was there again. an announcement relayed the news that our train was now two hours late.

one of the people who spent much of his time with us on our bench, feeling marooned, was Sanjeev Kumar, a young man on his way to Ahmedabad for an audition at some major competition - he was a singer. from what he told us, it sounded like he was pursuing what he loved very much against the wishes of his family. we hoped that he was successful using his 'gift that god has given me.' he was very concerned about the train delay, as he needed time to rest before the audition. a student approached us and hung around for ages, asking us for tips on getting jobs in England or visas to get there. he was studying a professional vocation, but did not seem to realise that he needed to do the work to find out details about visas and so on while he was still in India. Sanjeev was most unimpressed with him, but he didn't leave us alone for ages.

the minutes turned to hours and even the strongest, most active mind would have drifted towards boredom as countless goods trains stopped in front of us before slowly clanking off. one massive petrol train rested next to our platform for an eternity, the fumes alone making us pray that no-one was smoking within a five mile radius.

checking the situation with our train, we discovered it was now four hours late, meaning that it was departing at the same time as the bus. we confabbed and miserably decided that it seemed highly likely that the train would be later still - our decidedly last option was now our best. Philippa's caution was exonerated and Plan B was at the front yet again. we left Sanjeev trying to work out how to get to his audition on time - we hope he made it.

as we left Kota station, the city suddenly lost all of its power and lights in a total power cut. yes, the city with both a hydro and also a nuclear plant. a dispiriting rickshaw journey back into town yet again led us via a bit of a walk to a hotel, down the road from the busy roundabout that roared over the travel agent. we had carried our packs on our backs today for probably longer than the rest of the trip combined. disparate lights shone out onto the blackness of the main road from those premises with back-up generators. the hotel we had landed in as somewhere to wait for the coach had no-one else in its restaurant, all overly bright pastel shades in plastic and formica. we were quite parched and got through a small ocean of lassis and drinks. Edd also had some soup - he had so much liquid inside him that you could have rolled him to Ahmedabad. as it turned out, it would have been more comfortable. the mains power periodically came back on and then died within seconds, the restaurant's music returning on each occasion at its rather deafening, default setting. the toilets were in such a state that we wondered if they were French.

we couldn't drink our way to departure time, so we removed to the hotel's lobby and sat it out some more. the man on reception said that it would be fine for us to wait there, which was a relief as we were so tired by now that we had no idea where else we would go. the day was taking on all of the strange qualities of a dream where we were trapped in a maze with moving walls.

after waiting as long as we could, we hauled our packs on again and dragged ourselves up to the travel agents. the noise was truly deafening, with coaches regularly driving past and letting go with their loud, piercing polyphonic horns. a ragtag group of Indians were slumped among luggage and packing cases. not many of them sported the usual smiles - perhaps their day had been as much fun as ours. we collapsed in a corner and tried to make sense of the chaos. would we have time to make the station and the once a week train if the coach was delayed as well, and would that be such a good idea?

as if to spin us out further, a bearded and robed figure with a twinkling smile and a very faraway look suddenly materialised in our midst and painted a red tikka on our foreheads and those of all our other passengers while muttering prayers or incantations under his breath. he then disappeared. did you see that too?

Edd found someone involved with the agents and discovered that our coach was now scheduled to leave about half an hour later than we had previously understood. the disorientation of the blaring road was a mirror to our mood. we also discovered that we had to catch the coach about 100 metres away. since none of them sported anything as unnecessary as a destination sign, this could prove to be difficult. the man Edd spoke to said that he would help us out.

before 10pm, he suddenly asked us to follow him. we staggered after him through the traffic and passed several likely looking candidates before stopping next to a coach with double decker bunks up to the ceiling and only a handful of seats on one side underneath. 'Ahmedabad,' the driver? guide? random man? sitting in the doorway confirmed, or possibly wondered aloud to himself. we climbed on and squeezed down the tiny aisle offset from the centre, our packs scraping the darkened glass on both sides that formed one wall of the compartments. we found our berth (singular) and were surprised to find it was a double, a row of the same the reason for the off-centre layout. on the top row, we had some difficulty clambering up and throwing our bags in before hoisting ourselves up.

within seconds we realised that the sleeper coach may not have been such a great idea. we reckoned later that the entire space was no larger than 6' x 3' x 3'. the floor was synthetic fibre, two walls were darkened glass and the ceiling was plastic. there was no AC, so we lay there and melted for 40 minutes before we finally left at 10:30pm. Edd felt so ill that he actually got off the bus for a few moments. even without our luggage, it would have been an achievement for him to lie down and rest; with it, it was impossible. our interior curtain was missing, and the railing that prevented you from falling out of the windows was broken. we put our drinks in the wall mounted tray and it fell off the wall with its plastic splintered. even with the windows wide open, hiding behind the exterior curtain for some privacy, the night was still, airless, stale. the coach journey was scheduled to take 13 hours.

we were reminded of the scene in the film Withnail and I where the two central characters accost a farmer while 'escaping' from London to the country. caught in a downpour, Richard E. Grant's character wails, 'We've gone on holiday by mistake,' before adding plaintively, 'we're not from London!' we had to remind ourselves that we were in this tiny rectangular prism for fun and relaxation. it felt like being buried alive.

finally setting off, we came to a halt barely moments afterwards - to fill up with petrol. heaven forefend that such a thing should have been done earlier. an impressively drunk man serenaded our side of the coach and occasionally banged the glass. blaring off again, we peered forlornly out of our window. any preconceptions that this was a 'sleeper' coach were shaken and rattled to pieces within minutes. Rajasthan's roads are poorly maintained, for sure, but this felt like we were going cross-country. a more bone-shaking ride you could not fearfully dream of; perhaps our height amplified the sensation.

it didn't seem that we had gone very far before we made our first break or stop, at which all of the lights were switched on in full, just in case you might miss it by being unfortunately asleep. although Philippa stayed on, almost everyone else got off, Edd following in an attempt to straighten his spine out. most of the bus' passengers of both genders then went to the nearest fence and urinated wherever they felt like. wherever it was, it wasn't a main road. where would we end up? the only premises open were chai and snack stalls, one of which prominently displayed the loudest television we have ever suffered. one comedy programme had 12 sponsors; it took the announcer over a minute to read through them.

obviously in no hurry, the driver eventually got back on. we were quite strung out by now. the coach vibrated intensely down what felt like a stony ravine, tossing us around our box of a temporary home. we had 12 more hours of this? perhaps one of the more violent road bumps would knock us unconscious. that would indeed be a blessing.

edd & philippa