Poo Poo in the Loo Loo on the Choo Choo

After a stonkingly good first few days in Delhi it was time to attempt our first navigation of the Indian train system. Things got off to a nervy start as we couldn't find our seats, and ended up thrusting our ticket into several bewildered Indian men's faces. Thankfully as departure time beckoned, we realised that carriages S1 and SE1 were in fact different before the mild panic escalated into a full blown case of the wahhhs.

As seems to be becoming a common theme, we are seemingly a popular local attraction and had soon attracted a right band of merrymen who crowded into the booth. First was a guard with a f*ck off large AK47 - weren't in too much of a hurry to tell him to boot it. The next interesting chap was some chancer who emerged from the pack to attempt to show us truly awful magic tricks. Our typically British fake smiles encouraged him to continue to try and engage us in some equally tragic card game. Confused by the game's simplicity: 3 cards each, turn and show them all and wait for him to proclaim the winner at random, led to Gee being the winner. Her prize - kiss the Indian man - again a seemingly common theme. The cheeky fella then suggested we put money on the game and just as we were about to dig deep for our rupees he was promptly chased away by the same AK47 wielding guard. Who knows what became of India's answer to Derren Brown...



Thankfully, as the time came for all good travellers to curl up on tiny, hard beds (PB struggled), the crowd seemed to disperse and we thought we were in for a clear night. However, as all good kids know, you should go to the loo pre bed to avoid midnight mishaps and PB decided to brave the toilet. The only rule of the train loo: do not use whilst the train has stopped due to it's squat'n'drop nature. Apparently sh*tting on the tracks across the breadth of India is acceptable, just don't do it on the station tracks. Unfortunately moving trains mean moving bodies and on arrival to the hole in the ground, PB had the joy of finding a fresh steaming turd waiting as a not-so-little 'welcome to India' present. Nevertheless, after PBs successful navigation of the turd, it was the turn of the girls and we discovered that Gee has clearly been skipping leg day recently and required the generous hand of HKC to avoid an unfortunate squat'n'drop accident. Just remember, every day is leg day on the night trains of India.



Bladders emptied and all safely tucked in, it seemed we had avoided the dreaded bed share sitch we'd heard of so many times, until HKCs ankle proved just too irresistible for one local man, giving the poor girl quite the fright as she had the shock of contending for space with a bed buddy at 4 in the morning. Wild gesticulation on all parts resolved the situation and in no time at all we'd arrived in Varanasi, spiritual home of Hinduism.