On the real Chennai Express from Allapy to Chennai. Will be arriving in the morning and looking forward to spending some time in the grand city that is Chennai. I’m in the general sleeper section compartment of the train right now. The seats are sticky. It’s humid so we get a bit sweaty and sticky. Sticky and sticky seats suck. The bathrooms smell pretty bad when you walk by them. It smells inside and is pretty dirty. You want to avoid the bathroom as much as possible if you can. And if you’re lucky, you’ll have good faucets that work. I used to love traveling like this. Like the normal folk do here. Traveling with the same amenities as them makes me feel like I’m traveling the right way. But it’s wearing me down. Travel does wear me down nowadays. I used to travel in the general compartments, lower than the sleeper section. You weren’t guaranteed a seat there and almost an unlimited amount of tickets were sold. I have traveled for hours there before, standing in the midst of hundreds of bodies squished together, fighting for an inch of room. Add the humidity, lack of deodorant and let your imagination run wild on what it was like. After the two weeks running around in Mumbai and staying at a small place this year, I was really not feeling a twelve hour trip on a train with low amenities. I opted for an AC compartment and it was a great decision. The seats were so much cleaner(not sticky!) and it wasn’t humid there at all. I got pillows and blankets too! Since it was almost three times the price of the sleeper compartment, the people who could afford it were definitely from a different social background. The variety of people were actually a lot less interesting but the people in the AC compartment were a lot more behaved and polite. I felt safer with my belongings and the ride was very comfortable in general. I feel like opting for more higher standards in travel options from here on out. Maybe for certain adventures I’ll keep it old school. But for now, I need more amenities whenever I can get them. The excitement of living a raw life is kind of wearing out for me. I feel kind of snobby for feeling this way but it is what it is. Sigh..
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 18:42:07 +0000
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