13th of March, 2023.
To enter the train is tough. People are pushing and it is crowded. But once I am inside, it is actually still quite empty, for my surprise. I take one empty bed on top, and quickly climb in. I do it too quickly, actually. The result is my shorts completely ripped apart in between my legs. End to end. It would be funny if it wasn’t tragic. Luckily, I am wearing a tunic, long enough so nobody sees it when I walk.
Fast, the train starts to get full. I have my backpack on the rack right across my bed. Some men start asking to share the bed, saying that other people are also sharing. I calmly answer that I will share it, but only with other women.
In five minutes, an Angel walks in. She is Angel, truly, even though her names spells like Anchal. I quickly tell her she can come up with me. She seems so happy! That makes me happy too! That would be the beginning of a wonderful journey of Lei and Angel from Jaipur to Mumbai.
I must stop wondering how come these wonderful people cross my path. It is difficult to stop being surprised too. I guess that I just have been right this whole time and the world is simply full of wonderful people, so it is normal that, as long as you keep moving, you will keep encountering them everywhere. Right?
Angel is a magician! A magician! How incredible is that? And she is great! She is the first woman magician to perform some really dangerous magic trick, of being set on fire inside a box. She has been on many television shows and she keep touring all over India. She is so amazing, so much fun, and I feel so lucky to have her as my companion all the way to Mumbai, on my first train travel in India.
Funny fact is, this is her first time travelling alone. Normally, she travels with her troupe, so they go from city to city together. She confesses she was a bit nervous, but her friends were telling her that everything would be OK. Isn’t curious that fate put her to sit beside a woman who has been travelling alone for so many years and with a very positive point of view about women travelling alone?
At some point I tell Angel I don’t have a ticket. She tells me that at night, most likely, nobody will come. And we should just lay down and try to sleep. We try to find a way in which we both can lie down, like a “top and tail” position. Unfortunately, I barely manage to catch some sleep. But Angel tells me later that she managed to.
The trip should take around 17 hours. We stay in the bed until middle morning, when then everybody goes down and sit in the bottom benches. We start talking with some other lovely people. They are all curious about what am I doing here. I guess they are not used with tourists taking the third-class trains. Angel does all the translation and they are surprised by my travels.
Being morning and all, with so many people coming and going, I get more nervous about the possibility of someone coming to check the tickets. But nobody comes. At least I haven’t seen anyone. Neither did Angel.
When I think about this whole adventure, riding a train in India, after so much I have seen in movies, heard from people, and wandered myself how it would be, I can’t help but think that life is really incredible! Sometimes, I cannot believe the things I am actually doing it…
10 Years Around the World 