Trivandrum, Kerala, India – We woke up and judging by the temperature outside at 10:00 a.m. we declared a “Weather First No. 2” This was by far the hottest day we’d experienced in India. Our heat wave wasn’t going to last that long, for we were crossing out of the tropical zone for the first time since we’d entered it way back in October in Botswana & Zambia. Boo hoo.
We headed over to the station, but of course a train had derailed somewhere up the line so our train was delayed. None of the station workers knew which trains were coming or going or whether our train would depart at all. Wonderfil – and I was about to willingly board a train for two entire days? What was I thinking?
Our train finally pulled up at 4:00 p.m. and we found our first class coupe (pronounced coup-ay) which was to serve as our cell for the next fifty hours. The coupe had two fold down beds, one of which doubled as the seat during the day, plus two small tables, one in each corner of the room. We had one window looking outside and one, with bars on it, which faced the train’s hallway – another glass windowon the opposite side of the corridor.
We dumped our stuff down and to our surprise the train pulled away at 4:30 p.m., just as soon as everyone had boarded. Not a lot to do on a train, so the jayfay visited, and as the lights in our room were too dim to read by once the sun had gone down we retired early for the evening.