As mentioned previously, Pondicherry was a wonderful place to spend a few days. Unfortunately, leaving there was not such a pleasant experience! We'd managed to get some tatkal train tickets on the posh AC2 class to Madruai, where we were going to spend a day exploring before heading by bus onto Kumily, the jump off point for Periyar national park. We first had to get an hour long train from Pondy to Vilupuram, where within 5 mins of getting on the train I was being badgered by an incredibly annoying Indian man (he gave me a gift of his pen in return for my fake phone number). After the ordeal of escaping him and that train, we had a couple of hours in this strange little station, kept company by bats, cockroaches, lizards and rats. Delightful. We stood by our platform, waiting patiently for our train to come. Of course, it was delayed. We waited, and waited, and kept being assured that our train was next. After about 2 hours of this, at 11.30pm, we became rather suspicious and tracked down the guy in charge, who informed us that actually the train had left from a different platform some time ago! Another train had arrived at this point, and he said that was the last train to Madurai. Nikki managed to get him to stamp our now useless tickets so that we could get on the train, and then made him run to help us find a seat somewhere on the train. He offered to put us in 2nd class unreserved, which is probably what you might imagine an Indian train to be like - people practically sitting on top of each other, and we were told to stand for the next 7 hours, which went down a treat I can assure you.
Anyway, after shouting that we need a bed, we ran to the other end of the train and got shoved into sleeper class just before the train left. With no allocated bed and an invalid ticket, you might not think things could get worse... until we managed to lose the invalid but stamped ticket. Now with no bed and no reason to be on that train, we basically had to hide from the ticket inspector for the journey. We found an empty bed which we sat on for a while, then Nikki kindly let me lie down for a bit whilst she sat on the floor with mice and beetles to keep her spirits up until a bed became available to her. What a nightmare of a trip! By the time we arrived in Madurai we had no desire to look around whatsoever, so we hopped straight on the bus to get to Kumily.
After 4 hours, we arrived. And all I can say is, wow! Lush vegetation, palm trees everwhere, the scent of flowers in the air, it was like getting to paradise after all those hours of torture!
Anyway, after shouting that we need a bed, we ran to the other end of the train and got shoved into sleeper class just before the train left. With no allocated bed and an invalid ticket, you might not think things could get worse... until we managed to lose the invalid but stamped ticket. Now with no bed and no reason to be on that train, we basically had to hide from the ticket inspector for the journey. We found an empty bed which we sat on for a while, then Nikki kindly let me lie down for a bit whilst she sat on the floor with mice and beetles to keep her spirits up until a bed became available to her. What a nightmare of a trip! By the time we arrived in Madurai we had no desire to look around whatsoever, so we hopped straight on the bus to get to Kumily.
After 4 hours, we arrived. And all I can say is, wow! Lush vegetation, palm trees everwhere, the scent of flowers in the air, it was like getting to paradise after all those hours of torture!
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