India – I Missed my Train.

Author Bio:

Keith Jones is the founder of Baja Jones Adventures, Jones Adventures, Tigress Tours in Thailand African Safari Tour and Butanding Tours in the Philippine Islands and has led thousands of people to Mexico and other interesting locations around the world. He specializes in gray whale tour, blue whale tour, gray and blue whale combo tour, giant panda bear tour, walk a tiger tour, shark tour, African safari tour, African gorilla trek, arctic narwhal tour and Magdalena Bay whale watching tour. He also writes about Baja travel and gray whales. Keith Jones is the author of Gray Whales My Twenty Years of Discovery.

A missed train ride results in a secretive photo session inside a secluded village harem.

I wasn’t having fun until I missed the damn train.  I read the ticket and thought it said 8:55 AM departure, but it really said 7:55.  This was a first for me; I had never missed a train, plane or boat before.

My first reaction when the security guy told me that the train had already left was to tell him to get it back.  It couldn’t just leave without me!  So I just stood there for a minute wondering what to do next.  The scrawny porter was still holding my large blue Samsonite hard shell case on his head.  While I ran through my options, the security guy suggested I get out of the way and let the other people who hadn’t missed their train, pass me by.  Chagrined at my selfish attitude, I stepped from the line and scratched my head, thinking about what my next move should be.

Finally I took a clue from the Amazing Race TV show that I had seen recently.  Following in some of those competitor’s footsteps I walked across the street from the train terminal to one of the many hole in the wall travel agents.  These agents specialize in just this sort of thing.  The agent I went to was up a flight of stairs so narrow that the porter had to turn my big blue case sideways to get it up the stairs.  As I climbed the narrow stairway my shoulders rubbed against both walls.

The door at the top of the stairs was open.  Behind the open doorway was a room so small the desk almost filled the available space. A small 3 legged stool with a seat about half the size of my butt was to be my seat.  For the moment I leaned against the wall, and placed one foot up on the stool.  The porter stood outside the doorway on the tiny stair landing. There wasn’t space inside the office for my suitcase and me. 

There was an aged man behind the desk.  He wore a gray business suit with a brilliantly colored patterned tie.  The red, yellow and green of the tie were so bright I found myself looking at the tie instead of the man.  He was smiling and stuck his hand out to give mine a typical limpid Indian style handshake when I finally glanced up at his face.  Still smiling he introduced himself.  “I am Mister Singh, your convenient ticket agent.”

I then gave him my ticket and asked if he would check for other trains departing for Sawai Mondepohr.  “I missed my train and need to get to Sawai Mondepohr” I said.  He pointed with a sweep of his hands, indicating I should sit on the stool.  Gingerly I sat on the stool which was so short my eyes barely cleared the top of the desk. 

“Meester Keee” he said, “Lucky you because there are two more trains today.”  Calm and a feeling of relief washed over me.  This experience was proving to be a bit stressful and worrisome.  I smiled with relief.  Then Mr. Singh my convenient ticket agent continued, “Sir is unlucky for u - today is birthday of Hazarat Ali” I stared at him with a blank look on my face as he tapped at the computer keyboard.  “Who’s Hazarat Ali?” I asked.

He finished tapping at the keyboard and looked up.  “This is a big National Holiday weekend here.  So unlucky for you!  All trains today and tomorrow are completely full.  Also all air flights are sold out, no tickets available.”  I frowned.  India wasn’t turning out to be much fun.

So far since my arrival yesterday at 2:00 AM I haven’t really had any fun at all.  The tuk tuk driver named Sambu, who drove me around the city for four hours was interesting enough.  But it was just a four hour ride from one temple to the next.  Temples are interesting when accompanied by fiestas or celebrations, but on their own, well for me they are just another place of worship. 

I just wasn’t finding Delhi exciting.  Dirty, you bet. Crowded, uh huh.  But fun?  All the women are covered head to ankle in yards of silk or rayon, so girl watching isn’t a good option here. 

I’m not the temple and museum kind of guy.  So all the dead people exhibits and really old temples just hadn’t outweighed the dirt and the poverty I have seen everywhere in Delhi.  Hundreds of men sleeping on the sidewalks and on the hard concrete floors of so many of the businesses gave me a bad first impression.

The really good Indian food I’ve eaten didn’t tip the balance either.

Sitting in the travel agents office, pissed off because my eyes don’t work like they used and I can’t even read a train ticket, I decided to get out of India.  Missing my train felt like an omen of bad things to come.  I asked the travel agent to try and change my flight date to Bangkok.  I would just stay longer at the Tiger Temple in Thailand. 

I sat quietly while the travel agent tapped gently on a keyboard that was taped together with small pieces of peeling silver duct tape.  After mumbling a few phrases in some language that couldn’t have been English, he looked up and said, “Mister you have no luck today.  Your Air India ticket cannot be changed without very big fee.”  He smiled as he said this, perhaps counting his tiny commission from the very big ticket fee.  Thankfully that idea didn’t work out either.  It was lucky for me all the flights from Delhi to Bangkok were booked full for the next week.  Otherwise I would have missed a great trip.

The travel agent quoted me $240 U.S. dollars for a car and driver to drive me to Ranthambhore.  This was only about twice the price of my first class train ticket. Since I couldn’t get to Bangkok, I decided to stick with the original plan and do the Indian Tiger safari in Ranthambhore.  Reluctantly I booked the car and driver with Mister Singh who as things had turned out really was my convenient travel agent.

Fifteen minutes after signing the contract and handing over my pile of rupees, I was loaded into the backseat of a very tiny, but nearly new car.  Saleem, my driver, said he had to stop at his home and pick up a few things to take along.  He left me outside, standing at the car while he went inside his house.   I grabbed my camera and snapped a couple shots of the pedal style tricycle rickshaws parked next to the car.

As soon as I started taking photos a couple kids popped up near me, smiling.  I pointed to the camera asking if they wanted their picture taken. . . . Of course they did.  Every kid I come across wants to have her picture taken.  The two kids quickly doubled to four and then finally stabilized at around 10 or 12 laughing children.  I snapped half dozen pictures, showed the kids the photo on the camera screen and laughed along with them as they pointed and laughed at one another.

That’s when I knew missing the train was the best thing to happen to me so far.  Now I was doing what I like to do.  Meeting the local people and just having fun.  While I was shooting the kids, some adults came over to us.  They were shy and sort of edged up, wanting to see the pictures, but too shy to ask.

When I showed them, it set off a chain reaction and soon I had a crowd of maybe a dozen adults and the dozen kids. Some were the tricycle drivers who had been lazing on their tricycles and others appeared to be the spouses of the drivers.  We were just getting comfortable with one another to the point where the adults had about worked up their nerve to ask me to photograph them, when Saleem returned.  He threw his bag in the backseat and I climbed into the passenger seat up front with him.  Without ceremony I waved at the crowd as we headed off to Ranthambhore.

The hole in the wall travel agent Mr Singh had told me it was a 5 hour drive to Ranthambhore.  We started at around 9:30 and actually arrived around 5:00 PM.  But that was really okay because I had a great day along the way thanks in part to a couple unscheduled stops.  On a journey like mine it really is the journey itself, not the destination that makes the trip worthwhile.

Camels, water buffalo and exotic women carrying all sorts of stuff balanced on their heads made for an interesting drive.  Some of the bags these women carried looked like they might weigh 50 or even 100 pounds.  These women just walk along, hips swaying rhythmically side to side in counterpoint to the load on top of their head.

After 3 or 4 hours on the road I was starting to get hungry.  I had skipped breakfast because I wanted to be sure of the toilet facilities on the train before I took a chance on eating anything.  Saleem mentioned that he wanted to stop at his wife’s family home and village, which just happened to be on our way to Ranthambhore.  I agreed to the detour. 

We turned off the narrow two lane highway onto a one lane paved road, then onto a narrower one lane semi-paved road.  Five or ten minutes after leaving the highway we pulled up to a complex of buildings that Saleem said were all owned by relatives of his wife.

Saleem suggested that I sit on the chamboy (a bed like structure with woven cane netting that is the standard Indian bed and sofa) under one of the open sided patio-like structures, while he let everyone know he was there.  By then several children had already gathered around us.  I pulled out the camera and the fun started.  With each photo, the crowd of kids (and adults) grew larger.  Eventually swelling to about twenty or thirty. 

Saleem finally dragged me away to sit with his father-in-law in the shade of a structure that seems part patio and part outside bedroom.  There was a narrow window opening in the rear of this patio wall through which a private courtyard was visible.  Saleem pointed through the window and suggested I go look around.  Looking through the window opening I saw two women staring back at me.  When they noticed I was looking at them, they pulled their veils across their faces and turned away, giggling.

I walked around the building through an arched doorway set in the whitewashed adobe mud wall and entered the courtyard.  The two young women again pulled veils across their pretty faces.  I glanced around the courtyard, thinking wow, just like in an Arabian Nights fairtale.  Half a dozen private rooms opened onto the courtyard.  Each room was a private sleeping area for someone.  I think I was inside Saleem’s uncle in laws’ harem.

I pointed at a three year old and gestured I wanted to take a photo.  The mother was shy and didn’t want her photo taken.  I indicated that I would only shoot the child.  She pushed him forward and I took the photo, and then showed her the image on the digital camera screen.  She smiled and pulled me to the second young woman so she could also see the photo.

Next thing I knew, the shy mom dropped her veil and pulled the kid over to stand next to her.  Then she bent down and gestured for me to shoot them together.  I did, I showed them the photo and then we shared it with the other woman who was still sitting with a baby in her arms.  The baby was all swaddled in soft silk fabric.

We repeated this shoot and look action a few more times, when suddenly the second mom – the one with the baby - pulled her veil from across her face.  She gestured for me to take her photo.  She was still sitting on the chamboy with her baby in her arms.  I took the photo, but was unprepared for what happened next.

I leaned over and showed her the photo.  Then the mom sat up straighter on the bench and nestled her infant to her sari clad bosom.  Quicker than an eye blink, she pulled her sari up, exposing a milk swollen golden brown breast.  The purple tipped nipple jutted out at me like the barrel of 45 caliber pistol.  I started to sweat.   My eyes darted around the courtyard, searching for any angry male relatives who might be spying on my activity in this modern day harem.  But there was only the other young woman and her baby.  After what seemed like an hour, but was only a split second the mom thrust her breast to the baby so it could begin nursing.  She smiled up at me and asked me to take that photo.

If the penalty for looking at a woman without a veil is a public beating, what penalty could I expect for photographing her exposed boob.  (I think the Muslims here in India are more tolerant than in the Arab world, so public emasculation probably isn’t the penalty for sneaking a peak here, but I was feeling stressed.)   All I can say is thank heaven (or Allah or Ganeesh) none of the men lazing in the front saw what I was up to here behind their backs. 

The mother’s brown nipple stared at me, while mesmerized I snapped a dozen fast photos of her breast before, during and after she pulled the baby tight to nurse. 

To this day, that experience remains as a taunting video clip, burned onto the forefront of my brain.  I can just imagine the torrid gossip that would have raced through this tiny village if any of the male relatives had chanced upon this innocent photo session.

I took the last shot as fast as possible.  But it did take a bit of maneuvering because I was distracted by my first view of what lies beneath the yards of multi-colored fabric that most Indian woman wear.  I eventually showed her the image of her baby nursing on the view screen.  I took her seductive smile as my reward (and warning to scram).  I beat a hasty retreat out of that much too private courtyard.  I can’t say that I ran out of there, but I did break a sweat and probably set a new record for the 5 meter dash. 

Saleem saw the sweat running down my forehead and asked if I was hot and did I want to sit in the shade?  I said no, I thought I would go take some more kid pictures on the other side of the village.

Walking away, I couldn’t help looking back to get one last glimpse of my Madonna model.  Sure enough, there she was peeking around the courtyard wall, the tiny white diamond glistening on the side of her nose, her veil pulled way back behind her ears, and her bare, but stylishly hennaed feet exposed so I could see the silver anklet and toe rings she displayed with obvious delight.  She laughed as I tumbled over a short brick wall landing on my ass with a thud and a swirl of yellow dust.  Still laughing she then gave me one last wave before I turned toward the horde of young Indian children patiently waiting to see what the funny Gorah (white man) would do next. 

All I wanted to do was to get away from that exotic and dangerous courtyard before that Muslim beauty told the entire village about our impromptu modeling session.

But it wasn’t like I could hide out.  By the time Saleem and I finally left this village with no name, I had at least 100 people gathered around, waiting for me to take their photo.  And when I finally did leave they all crowded in front of me while Saleem took a group photo.

It was certainly a surprising lunch stop.  And one that I won’t forget anytime soon.  Imagine all the fun I would have missed if I hadn’t been late for my train ride.

 

Keith E. Jones