Sunday, August 3, 2008

Train ride to Jaipur

So on the same day we're about to board a train to Jaipur, we heard there was a 7 car train fire that left from Hyderabad. They don't know how the fire started, but it happened in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping. Over 30 people died. Hmm...this was just a fluke and it won't happen to us...right? I couldn't help thinking about this the entire bus ride to the train station, but by the time we got there, I calmed down. Riding the overnight train is probably on my top-ten fav memories of this trip. It as sooooooo fun.

Waiting for the train. They said today wasn't really crowded. You think?!
Vartika is one of the USEFI administrators that read our applications. She's super fun and made sure we had an 'authentic' Indian train ride experience.
Sleeping on the top tier.

We were in an AC-3 tier car. This is considered 2nd class. First class has only 2 tier bunks and curtains between them. Ours didn't have curtains, and I had about a foot and a half of space from the bunk to the ceiling. It was pretty comfy. Third class has no AC and fourth class has no AC and no bunks. Didn't sleep as much as I would have liked to, but it was better than sitting up for 8 hours with no AC.
Arrived at Jaipur at 5am. When we got off the train, there were dozens of families sleeping on the concrete train platforms waiting for their trains. We tried our best not to step on any of them,
Our train leaving for the next stop.


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