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  Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Monday, April 5, 2010

Day 91 – 5th April

Yet again not much to report and another lazy start to the day. We were checking out at 12 and slowly had breakfast and packed up.  The repetition continued with yet another wrong bill from the hotel.  It was out by over 300 rupees in the hotels favour and I've decided that every single hotel owner in India is either stupid or corrupt!  We paid the correct amount and yet again once we had paid, all the smiles and pleasantries ceased and we appeared to no longer exist as far as the manager and staff were concerned.  

We headed to the Post Office and managed, after several trips to the ATM and managing to skip the parcel wrapping up queue, to post off some things we seem to have been carrying around for a good while.  An Indian guy actually asked if I was in the queue at some point.  I nearly fell over in shock.  An Indian with manners!  I commented about this to Rach and apparently the same guy had been just as courteous during one of her transactions as well.

By the time we got to New Delhi train station we only had around an hour to kill before our 14 hour journey to Gorakhpur.  The train station was absolutely nuts.  Completely jam packed absolutely everywhere.  The best way to describe it is imagine how busy an already crowded platform is when a packed train arrives and everyone gets off.  Well the whole station was like this continually.  Thankfully they have a message board up informing you the order of the carriages on the train, so theoretically you can make your way to roughly the correct part of the 20 carriage platform before the train arrives.  Of course, this being India, the carriages ended up being the opposite way about.  There then ensued what can only be described as an every man for themselves rugby scrum as everybody on the packed platform had ten minutes to get to the opposite end of the platform that they were at.  I shouted to Rach that if we didn’t make it in time we had just to board the nearest carriage and try and meet up at the next station.

Thankfully everyone appeared to make it, and there was even time for the railway police to arrange all the unreserved passengers into an orderly queue.  How they all managed to fit into the carriages I’ve no idea.

We settled in for the rest of the day, looking out the window as we headed North across the plains.  Around 9pm we shared what would be our last Indian Railway meal of the trip.  And pretty good it was too.  It would be another early rise tomorrow and we both tried to get some shut eye in preparation for what would probably be quite a big day.  Needless to say we didn’t.  I mean, if you’re sharing a compartment with two other people who incidentally were quiet when you were sleeping through the day, why wouldn’t you wake up at midnight and proceed to eat a full meal and talk and laugh loudly!  Rach shut them up though.  Go Rach.   She seems to be single handedly trying to teach over 1 billion people some manners!

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Lining up for unreserved class   Comments!	Lining up for unreserved class	An crowded Indian rail station	The crowded platform

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