Waking up with continuing stomach issues persuaded me to take the last two pepto-bismols a cybercafe owner in Pune had given me. They seemed to help and I was moving by 11am. My first call was to the hotel's cybercafe where Mrs Khan had offered to make me a bag for posting stuff home. She said that it would be ready shortly so I filled up the time by buying a couple of notebooks and some stuff from a nearby pharmacy.
The pharmacy had a good system. I told an assistant what I wanted and it was piled up in front of me, then entered into a computer. The assistant then printed a two-part invoice which I handed over to a cashier in a locked box well away from the goodies. The cashier took my payment, stamped the invoices and handed them back to me. I then went to another counter where my goodies were checked against the computer and the invoice, then bagged up by a third worker. I finally recieved a nice package with one copy of the invoice attached to the outside.
Back at the hotel, Mrs Khan's contacts had made a lovely drawstring bag and we packed the stuff into it, then I set off to the post-office to get posting prices. Resistered airmail seemed the best value but I wanted to get another cover and to add in a few more things so didn't post it there and then. MISTAKE!!! See later for why.
I had a fun time trying to sort out the photo CD non-back-up issue and then finally left the hotel for the station. There, I met with Suriya for the final time - she wanted to reclaim an umbrella she had lent me and to give me a contact in Kolkata and food for the journey. Again, I was overwhelmed.
The journey was OK - I even got a lecture on the uses of venturi tubes in pneumatic-powered aeroplane gyrocompasses. I was on a 'sleeper' car. I think I've described these before in detail but just in case, they are divided into little alcoves. On the side of each alcove are three padded bunks, perpendicular to the direction of travel. The middle one folds down to be the back of the seat. (The seat base doubles as the lower bunk.) Across the aisle at the foot of each set of bunks are two seats whose backs fold down to form another lower bunk. Above them, at the level of the top bunks in the alcoves is a final bunk. The occupants are kept cool by three noisy but servicable fans in the alcove ceiling.
The difference between sleeper carriages and ACIII carriages is that ACIII carriages have fixed doors and glass windows to keep the heat out and the aircon in. ACII carriages only have two layers of bunk and so much more headroom.
'Chair car' carriages have one level of padded seat and second-class carriages have one level of wooden slatted seat. Unreserved have one level of wooden slatted seat and luggage racks, all heavily occupied as previously described. So now you know. I recommend sleeper if you want comfort and unreserved if you want fun!
Anyway, I slept for most of the journey, blessing the person who'd chosen to make one of my carriage's toilets a sit-down one.
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006