The Train to Shimla

We are aboard the Shatabdi Express, heading north for Shimla in India's cool hills.

If the Himalayas could be crossed by mental energy alone, we should long ago have reached Ladakh. However, we did something harder - we persuaded Indian Railways to carry Apollo.

Yesterday I went for tickets to the tourist office on the Parharganj side of the New Delhi Railway Station. “First you must find out the formalities for the bicycle,” said Ticket Man (it would be too simple to tell me himself?) I must visit the Parcels Office, he said.

The station has two Parcels Offices separated by twelve tracks and six platforms. Neither office is signposted in English or is much interested in the transport of bicycles by rail. I made four sweaty crossings of the congested over-bridge before reporting failure to Ticket Man, who then said “Ask for the Chief Parcels Officer”. Back at the nearer Parcels Office, a Lesser Parcels Man started to help, but then realised it was five o'clock. Paying no further attention to me he went into his office and changed to go home.

After two more perspiring over-bridge crossings, I at last satisfied Ticket Man that Apollo should be delivered to the far (Ajmeri Gate) Parcels Department an hour before the 7.40am departure of the Shatabdi Express. For being over sixty (or in compensation for six bridge crossings?) Ticket Man allowed us a 25% discount on the fares.

We appeared early this morning at Ajmeri Gate Parcels. A wiry man instructed me in rapid-fire Hindi, then saw my bewilderment and wheeled Apollo (minus bags, over which Ann, ex-hospital, stood guard) the length of the Shatabdi Express at Platform 12. A conference with the guard showed this to be wrong. Back to the front of the train, across 12 tracks to Platform 1, and again down the full length of the Shatabdi Express, which had been shunted there meantime, to an office. “You need him!” said Office Man, pointing to a uniformed man with a briefcase. Wiry Man gave Briefcase Man our tickets and explained in Hindi the logistical challenge now facing Indian Railways.

The time was 7.25 am, and Ann, who had no idea of Apollo's or my whereabouts, was twelve platforms away at Ajmeri Gate Parcels with the bags.

Briefcase Man took out his spectacles and polished them thoughtfully. He opened his briefcase. He searched at length for the form applicable to such rare cases as a bicycle being carried on a train, found it, and passed it to Wiry Man who gave it to me. I filled it in, fast. “You'd better go and get your wife,” said a bilingual onlooker who was absorbed in the unfolding drama.

Leaving (with misgivings) Apollo, our tickets and a hundred rupee note for lubrication in Wiry Man's care, I fought through the jostling crowds on the over-bridge to Ajmeri Gate.

Ann had put the bags on a steel and timber trolley that might have played a useful part in the construction of Hanuman's Tomb. I started wheeling it; but white men must not do such things, and Dark Man took charge. Across the twelve tracks, waiting for long, slow trains, went Dark Man (fuelled by the promise of a hundred rupees), trolley and I, with Ann following as best her week in hospital would allow. Again down the full length of Shatabdi Express we hurried, to find Apollo loaded and Wiry Man triumphant. Briefcase Man gave me a receipt for the bicycle. “Don't lose that, or you'll never see your bike again!” said Bilingual Onlooker. Dark Man, Ann, trolley, bags and I raced half the length of the train to this blessedly air-conditioned carriage and reached our seats just as the Shatabdi Express moved off. My shirt is still dripping.

The train gathers speed past tenements and boys flying kites and long sheds and warehouses, and more tenements of tumbledown concrete and brick. An attendant brings newspapers, flasks of hot water for tea, and an airline-style breakfast. I wish I'd washed my hands after the baggage trolley. Outside the window, there flash fields of corn, or sugar cane perhaps, wheat and rice, and towns of brick with washing drying on parapets.

People are working in the fields, but they are few; and we wonder, where are India's rural millions? Yesterday in Delhi our India seemed to be one immense bazaar; but this morning, as seen over a cooked breakfast in an aluminium dish, it is a vast farm, a landscape devoted to photosynthesis for human ends, a green flatness receding into haze.

The man beside me, going to Chandigarh to sell medical equipment, speaks of Shiva, the source of energy, and of powerful, gracious, loving Kali. Hinduism is a philosophy, not a religion, he says, it gives space for the exploration of spirituality. “This is why India produces mystics!”

The train slows, and the voice on the PA says “If you are getting down at Kurukshetra, we hope you have had a comfortable and pleasant journey.” When I'm home I shall “get down” from the Wairarapa train, and it will remind me of India.

Beside the track is a highway with grinding buses, making us glad the trains are running again after the floods. We pass a white, high-domed temple beside a still river, puddles with water buffalo splashing, children playing volleyball, houses with balustrades that might once have been elegant, and little bazaars by railway crossings with flocks of bicycles. Before he “gets down” at Chandigarh the medical equipment man gives me his card, “In case you should need help.”

In late morning, hills rise into clouds ahead. At Kalka we hurry to change to the Himalayan Queen, which will take us in wooden carriages to Shimla on rails two feet nine inches apart, laid in 1903 on sleepers of pressed steel. The little train rises steeply into the misty forest, doubling and trebling back on itself and crossing gullies on stone bridges. Six trainee police commissioners on a cultural study tour shout with delight. They photograph one another hanging out the windows, and change to digital when their film runs out. We come to little stations with hanging flower baskets, and climb up and up through long-leaved pines, then cedars, with down trains passing slowly on double track, their passengers smiling from the windows and asking if we like India. We reply truthfully that we like it very much, and think that Shimla must surely be the next stop. But the train climbs on into cooler air with every turn of the wheels. We are tired, and even the police commissioners become quiet; and outside is nothing but leaves and mist and monkeys, and people on platforms with umbrellas.

After five hours on the toy train we reach Shimla. It is raining; and the touts, each promising a Very Good Hotel, make us angry. We shout at them and go our own way to get lost in the streets and mist and hillsides of Shimla, and come to rest in a musty red-carpeted room and a bathroom with tiles, some of which are clean; and are so tired we get a meal by room service and leave half of it, and sleep with our window closed to keep the monkeys out.