06 March 2016

Overnight Train: Thivvim to Cochi

Wayne looked into flying, but apparently, there were no direct flights. So overnight train it was.
We got to the station super early (Our driver arrived 30 minutes early!) and then discovered the train was late one hour. Then two hours. Then three hours. In the end, our train was 3.5 hours late.
It was fine. We sat there, ate our snacks, read, talked, people/cow-watched. This one guy would not stop staring at me and finally, I made Wayne get up and move away. The guy was too creepy. We sat next to a nice French hippie backpacker, and we talked about travels with him.
When we got on our train, we weren’t sitting together. We asked the conductor, and he put us both in the same compartment, which we shared with an Indian woman and her adult daughter. It was close to ten and they were getting ready for bed, so we pretty much crawled into our bunks and fell asleep.
We woke up early to “chai, chai, coffee, coffee, chai.” Wayne got us a coffee and a chai and we sat there, rubbing the sleep from our eyes.
Then we heard that the guy in the compartment next to ours had gotten his bag stolen: inside, were his wallet, passport, phone, camera, and a bunch of other stuff. He was talking to the TC and the police quite a bit. I was grateful that our stuff had not been stolen, since Wayne had forgotten to lock things up. So, let this be a lesson: lock up your bags on overnight trains.
We arrived two hours late the next morning. It was okay - we had some terrible chai, awful breakfast, and good conversation to keep us going. Oh yeah, and love - that’s the main thing that really matters.

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