Bombay to Goa

It’s been a while since I took a train journey that lasted beyond three hours. The Deccan Queen is a great train and just the right vehicle to get from Pune to Mumbai and back for work. But going to Goa on board the Jan Shatabdi Express was going to be interesting. And I wasn’t wrong.

Catching the train from Dadar was as eventful as the journey itself. C1 was my bogey number and as I dutifully waited under the marquee for the train to arrive, one could feel something amiss. The announcements on the station made no mention of the ‘C’ bogeys. Only the ‘D’ ones were announced. As a result, even though the station markings showed C1 to be the third bogey from the engine, we were prepared for some last minute scampering. As was the rest of the platform since there would be a definite deviation from the markings and actual placements of bogeys. Sure enough, there was.

There I stood, sharp at 5:22 a.m. expecting to see C1 in front of me. Instead, it was D4. And with three minutes until the scheduled departure, there was no time for running across three bogeys on the platform. That was best done inside the train! And there began a game of "don’t step on my toes" interspersed with the occasional set of hop-scotch. Eventually, after trekking through four bogeys, we got into C1. But we didn’t know this was C1 since unlike earlier ‘D’ bogeys, there wasn’t any marking on this. Not inside the bogey anyway.

Investigations in C2 (obviously we overshot) revealed that a minor hike back was involved. And then there was the perennial issue of finding someone else in your seat and asking them to move away or in this case, renegotiating seats so our group was together and their group was as close as they could have been.

And all this even before the train moved! Once out of Dadar, though, this train stops at Thane and Panvel before embarking on a journey that shows some spectacular sights. The one pitfall of sitting in the AC Chair Car is the tint on the windows. It makes everything look calmer than it is and perhaps prettier too. So as I looked out (after a couple of hours of sleep, of course), it was breathtaking to find clear blue waters and seemingly untouched fields that swayed in the wind. Kind of reminded one of the cinematography in a Yash Chopra movie! But a quick step out of the AC compartment revealed the harshness of the sun and the obviousness of the landscape. I was indeed still in Maharashtra!

As I wrote this in the train, connecting to the Internet using my untrustworthy Reliance NetConnect card proved why I thought the card was untrustworthy. Perhaps the numerous tunnels we were going through prevented any strong signal from being engaged or perhaps it was just that Reliance sucks.

To be continued…