Lucknow to Amritsar... Eventually

The younger son of my friend's extended family and his friends were a little rude to a small group of young guys from villages when we traveled from Hardoi to Lucknow yesterday (which seems like a month ago now). They woke them up and made them squish together and exiled them to the top bunks of the train. One villager, an older man, sat there calmly and with a rare sense of dignity. At one point his eyes shifted towards mine and there was an overwhelming goodness in them. Both sets of eyes quickly darted away after that moment.

I was walking to my train's intended platform when I spotted a familiar face. It was that same older man. Both of our faces lit up when we recognized each other. We shook hands, the first of 3 or 4 times. He didn't speak English, which made for a difficult conversation. I told him I was going to Amritsar at 4 (char). He mistook that for platform 4. I told him platform 7 (sot) and tried to explain that I was leaving at 4. He kept telling me I needed to hurry because the train to Amritsar was leaving soon. However, there were at least 3 trains to Amritsar leaving within a couple hours of each other and I had a reserved ticket (probably an unknown luxury to this man) for a later one. We shook hands for the final time waved good bye and walked away smiling.

The train was 2 hours late. My seat area was piled with little children. They were more receptive to me than the little girl in my friend's family, but still not enthralled with me. The last few days have been a bit of a hit to my pride when it comes to small children liking me. This trip, I went in a 3AC car, meaning there are 3 bunks stacked on top of each other. When I take an overnight trip, I go 2AC, for shorter trips, I travel in the low-budget sleeper cars. I shouldn't complain, because traveling 3AC is a privilege here, but there was very little space and by the time I woke up, my body was cramped all over.

We had been traveling for 14 of the proposed 17 hours when the train stopped. I was told by other passengers that it was a train strike. But after looking it up online, the train's path fell victim to people protesting the anti-Sikh violent riots of 1984. My train was not the one stopped by the protestors, but the route was. I followed a Hindu couple with a baby boy and a Sikh couple with two small children out of the train. We were stranded in a place called Doraha. I'll need to look up its location at some point. Doraha was quite literally a dusty town. At least from the train station to the bus stand, it was characterized by run-down strip mall-like stalls on either side of the dusty road.

Then the two families and myself, all headed to Amritsar, stormed one bus. At one point, I was stitched into the seat, my little knees pasted to the seat in front, my arched back pressed against my seat back, and both sided slammed into my seatmates. A Hindi movie was blaring. The we got off the bus. I asked sardonically the husband of the young couple, "What happened, a bus strike?" He explained straight-faced that we needed to change buses. On the next bus, my big bag was shoved underneath my feet, so that I was curled up in a ball for much of the trip.

Well, 1pm, about 4 hours after we left the train, we arrived in Amritsar. The young Hindu couple, who I felt were a little arrogant towards me (and probably in general. He's a successful business man with a wife and child and he's very young. She speaks English really well and holds a bit of a sense of entitlement.), were still so helpful. My first impression of Amritsar is that I've never seen air that dark.