RAJASTHAN

31ST AUGUST - 12TH SEPTEMBER

Our train was very similar to the Chinese trains, nothing too grand and not a patch on the Russian trains but all in all not bad, we had chosen the air con sleeper carriage which meant we got our own bunk, and it was less crowded. It was a little more expensive but worth it! We were in a 4 bunk berth with an older Indian couple who seemed very pleasant although the women did have a bad wind problem!!! The journey was pleasant enough and hurray the train had a western toilet that was clean, much to our relief, as we had heard some quite grim stories about toilets on Indian trains! The train started slowing down and the nice Indian couple started sorting out their things so we thought ‘ah maybe we will get the berth to ourselves’ - not a chance! Our next travelling companions were somewhat tiresome to say the least - and included a proper weirdo! There was 3 men for the 2 allocated bunks and after they had noisily settled themselves in we exchanged pleasantries, of
the three there was one man who was dressed all in white, who was the weirdo!
He picked up our Lonely Planet started reading it and then basically just took the piss, we didn’t know what he was saying but you could tell, he was just pointing to parts in the book, showing the other and laughing and staring at us, especially me! He continued to stare for what seemed to be the whole journey, he was making me feel exceptionally uncomfortable, there was no let up. One of the other men tried to make conversation with Rob but his English wasn’t so good and our Indian was pretty non existent so it was a pretty broken conversation! I was pretty much ignored and excluded from the conversation except for the weirdo who was still continuing to stare. I buried myself into my book and tried to ignore them all, after a few hours I couldn’t stand it anymore and climbed into the upper bunk to carry on reading, still the staring continued. Now I can understand