India 2 – Hot and Bothered

So we set off from Casa Susegad reluctantly… the  onward journey will take us 300 Km south and east of Goa to the state of Karnataka, it’s been a lovely most relaxing and indulging place to stay, stopping off at the STM en route to get some money out of the machine – nothing , we try the next machine, NOTHING. We have no money, We managed to pay our bill at Casa Susegad. But we had assumed we would be able to get some cash.  Another ATM – NO CASH. AHHHH how we are going to pay the  taxi driver? A quick call to our Goa saviours Carole and Norman. They suggest we borrow some money from Lois our trusted taxi driver, who has been ferrying us around Goa, (they will reimburse him and the fare to the station). So we borrow 1000 rupees  (£10) from our cab driver.  We decide to go for the train anyway, though we will have no money to pay for any chai or snacks on the train.

Thank goodness Juanita the lovely cook at Susegad provided us with oranges and sandwiches.

This is quite an uncomfortable feeling, no money, in India.

Onwards to Hampi on the train, we opt for second class as I quite like NOT having ac but prefer instead the open windows.  BIg Mistake!

Its looking good, we board the train, stack our luggage away and sit down in our seats with a fellow priest? Monk? (Hindu equivalent) In all his robes , who sits the entire 6-hr journey in a cross legged yoga position, smiling from beginning to the end. The children climb up on to the top bunks, now their favourite place, catch up on their journals, (we didn’t even manage to do much of that in Goa) and eventually start watching a film. They have a lot of time to while away.. it’s pretty hot in this carriage, the windows are small and look more prison cells with bars on the windows. We are all dripping. It’s so hot. We arrive in Hubli and 10 people get on and proceed to also pack their bags away under our feet and join us on these seats- the temperature in the carriage goes up by a few degrees. It’s also VERY cramped. Maybe second class wasn’t such a good idea after all. We are 20 now in a carriage meant for 8 (by my UK estimation anyway) and 2 1/2 hrs still to go.

When I was last here in 1984 with my friend Elizabeth Pisani, we drank chai on trains out of clay pots; when you finished the tea, you threw the pot out of the window, degrading naturally back into the earth on the tracks. All very unconsciously Eco. This has now been replaced by tiny cardboard cups (at least it’s not polystyrene) but the habit of throwing things out the window continues. I am sitting opposite a young mother with a toddler. For every sip of water the young mother gives her child, she reaches for a plastic cup from a cloth bag, fills it with water from a bottle, proffers it to the child, then she throws it out of window. I try hard not to wince. No one puts rubbish in a bin, there are no bins. It’s a BIG problem here.