All this just to get to Udaipur?!

Today is going to be a long day and consist of several trips on India’s various methods of transportation. Doesn’t that just sound uber-appealing.

I get up at 4:45 because I need to be out the door walking to the bus station by 5. Since it’s only a kilometer or so away from my hotel, I arrive quickly and am soon dragging myself and my bags up the steps of the bus. At the moment, there are only about 5 people on it, but it definitely won’t stay that way. The bus driver goes slowly for the first part of the trip so that someone can lean out the door and shout our destination at people. If anyone wants to get on, the driver will come to a full stop just long enough for them to step off the road before moving on to find more customers.

Half an hour later the bus is pretty well full, and I’m sharing a 3’ wide bench with two guys in their twenties. I’m a little worried about whether they’ll “accidentally” lean/brush against me or that they’ll want to talk to me the whole way, but it turns out my fears are unfounded and we all just kind of slump over and sleep as best as we can in such cramped quarters. I have the window seat, so I have a great view of the sunrise, which you can actually see quite clearly through the clear country air. Unfortunately, when we stop for gas I’m able to see 3 little girls and a little boy run off of our bus and pee on the sidewalk equally clearly. What I don’t see but most definitely feel, are the trillion potholes our bus goes through. My teeth chatter for some parts of the trip, and I hit my head against the window a couple dozen times as the bus rocks from side to side. I’ve heard legends of these potholes and their fame is well deserved.

Otherwise, it’s an uneventful bus ride to Jhansi, followed by a rickshaw ride that I’m easily able to negotiate down to a good price. At the station I find my train in just a few minutes despite the signs being in Hindi; I’m actually happy to find that I have the cabin to myself for the short ride from Jhansi to Gwalior because I want to read and for the first time I will be able to find my station on my own. It’s a short trip and Gwalior is the only large station on this route, so I’m sure I can manage.

But it turns out it won’t even be that difficult because during an extremely long stop at a tiny little station I start chatting with a guy sitting on the other side of the aisle. He’s going to Gwalior, too, and since I mentioned I was tired, he said I should take a nap and he’ll wake me when we get there. Since my bags are all locked and secure, it’s bright daylight, and there’s a family just a couple seats down, I feel safe taking him up on his offer. Sure enough, he keeps his word and suddenly I’m right where I need to be to catch my next train.

I’ve got time for dinner, too, so he escorts me out of the station, past the annoying rickshaw drivers swarming the exit and to the doors of a café before heading his own way. I have plenty of time to eat a vegetarian thali (a tray with several small bowls of different dishes and chipati and rice in the middle) and a sweet lassi (basically vanilla yogurt) before I go back to the station and get on my train to Udaipiur.

Here’s the coolest part of the day: I’m traveling with a family in my cabin, but I’m pretty tired so I secure my bag and get into my upper berth so they can have the seats down below to themselves. They’ve got a 7 year-old boy and a 12 year-old girl with them, and I know exactly where this is going to go. Sure enough, about 20 minutes into the train ride the girl crawls up into the other upper berth and tentatively says hello. After a few harmless questions (Where are you from? Where are you going? How long have you been here?), she’s warmed up and ready to have a nice, long conversation, as all 12 year-old girls are.

At first I didn’t really want to talk; I was tired, not feeling great and trying to read about Udaipur. But after about ten minutes I found I was really enjoying myself. Aishani speaks excellent English and is super cute! Some things I learn about her: she’s traveling home from her cousin’s wedding; she has an older brother at university; she goes to a Christian school called Sofia, but she’s a Hindu; she’s on holiday but is bored and wants to go back to school; her favorite subjects are science and maths; she has 3 email addresses and likes to chat on Facebook; she likes going to Delhi; she has exams coming up in January.

Her family sees us chatting and asks her questions about what she’s learned about me (I may not speak Hindi, but I know when someone is talking about me). They send up boxes of snacks that they’ve brought and Aishani says I can have some, as well. You couldn’t pay me to decline, so I get to try a few sweet desserts: one is simply baked dough with spices and has a very mild flavor, the other is sweeter but I have no idea if it was baked, fried, or what (it’s a ball of large granules of something orange and falls apart in my hand). They’re delicious and I really appreciate that her family doesn’t mind us chatting.

Unfortunately, I’ve been feeling sicker as Aishani and I have been talking. My voice is going from alto to tenor, I’m coughing more frequently and a headache is building. After an hour or so I decide I should take a nap in order to have the energy to keep this up, so I apologize to Aishani, tell her I need to rest a little bit and roll over to go to sleep. I wake up at midnight and realize that I’ve completely missed her; she’s either asleep in one of the berths below or has gone to sit with her family in another cabin. I’m really upset that I’ve disappointed her; I’m sure she wanted to chat more and I’m not sure if she’ll have time in the morning since she’ll probably wake up right before she gets off the train. Maybe we can be friends on Facebook?

Lying back down, I continue to be surprised by exactly how uncomfortable it can be to sit/lay on these buses and trains. My butt is killing me!!! When I roll onto my side to relieve the pressure I wake up an hour later because now my hip hurts. Roll to the other side. An hour later roll onto my back. Repeat several times throughout the night so I never get any decent sleep.

So other than the usual physical discomfort that comes from sleeping on a bus/train and carrying around 50 pounds of gear all day, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I’m sicker, not better, than I was yesterday. This shouldn’t really surprise me, though, because everyone in this country clears their throat, coughs, sniffles and/or hacks up sputem on a near-constant basis. I’m sure about 20 different people today have sent some gross kind of germ into the enclosed air of a vehicle I was riding in. If it weren’t so nasally I’d say my voice has developed a sexy, low tone, but it is so it’s not.

Up until now, I’ve been blowing my nose a lot, but it was regular, clear snot. Also, my coughs have been really dry and just annoying to deal with. Of course there was some sinus pressure and fatigue, but I could push through it. But something happened today—on the bus, at the station, maybe it happened last night—that turned it into a full-on sinus/chest infection. Now when I blow my nose thick, sticky green globs the color of bad 70s shag carpeting come out. My coughs sound like they’re coming from underwater now, and bring up small clumps of phlegm that I can’t quite bring myself to spit on the ground like everyone else. My head is pounding and I’ve already slept for 10 hours. My ears are constantly plugged with that pressure that builds up when a plane takes off. I look so hot right now.

When we get to the station I’m buying 3 gigantic bottles of water; I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this thirsty. But other than that I’m not sure what to do. Should I go buy some regular cough/cold medicine? Do I need antibiotics? Can I get those without a prescription and how do I know which kind to buy? How do I find a trustworthy pharmacy? I’m going to have to rely on my hotel a lot on this one. One thing I can say for sure is I’m going to take it fairly easy tomorrow, get lots of sleep, eat good food, drinks lots of water and buy a big pack of Kleenex.

Ugh. Can’t stay awake anymore. Back to bed. Just one last thought: there are 11 days to go and since that’s my lucky number, I’m sure they’re going to be awesome. I go to sleep hopeful…