Train Ride to Vizag

Safely aboard the Howrah Express Mail Train bound northward towards Vizag, I settled into my berth in the 2-tier AC sleeper car. Ah, this was so much better than the non-AC 3-tier traveling that we had done in Rajasthan; no desert sands spewing in, a climate-controlled environment, less people, and even a pillow and bed sheets provided! Checking out the bathrooms, I was pleased to see a fairly clean (by Indian standards) Western toilet with toilet paper – a big step from the scary toilets in the 2^nd-class non-AC trains we previously took! I turned on my iPod, hoping that the music would drown out the cell phone talking by the two men in the upper bunks, one of who switched between two phones.

The train rocked back and forth during the night, crossing the Tamil Nadu border and into Andhra Pradesh. Every once in a while the train would stop, rather briefly in small villages and longer at larger stations. Dawn revealed a serene landscape, the soft glow of the emerging sun behind the fog rolling over the paddy fields. Palm trees silhouetted against the increasingly warm-colored sky. Already in early morning, farmers were out in the fields, with rice being the dominant crop. The train tracks went past thatched huts with cows in the yard and mounded piles of hay in the fields. Men bathed in rivers and pools of water. Women washed clothes by hand in the rivers, laying out the cloth on the nearby fields.

Soon the vendors began walking through the aisles of the moving train, calling out chai, coffee, omelet, and other Indian breakfast items. As the train continued northward, it relieved itself of more passengers, with a few boarding. Finally, around 1pm, we arrived at the railway station of Vizag, otherwise known as Visakhaptnam.

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