1st Train Trip

This was an unforgettable experience. Raquel was telling me during the trip back to Bangalore: “perhaps later I will say that this experience was good and I grew because of that”, I promptly said: “if so, by the end of this trip we will be 87 years old”.
Now you can imagine which kind of train trip was this one.

Just a small resume:

We had a ticket reservation made in internet for the sleeper class.
Before we took this train I had some friends telling me: You should not go in that class because it’s so dirty, you have rats and cockroaches passing all the time, it’s stinky and so on…
But it was our ticket… It was our only chance to go to Hampi with Jacky, a German girl who is leaving Bangalore by the middle of September…
So, we took the train to Hampi at 22.45 in Bangalore and we arrived there at 07.45. The Hampi Express can be a night train and it has several classes: Last class, sleeper, sleeper AC and first class (I think there is another class between 1st class and sleepers AC, whatever). Our ticket was SLEEPER, which means, just next to the lowest class! I’m sure you already have seen some images from Indian trains. Yes these trains really exist! Even if we were not in the last class, our class conditions were really bad! Yes, there were a lot of rats passing by, thousands of cockroaches and MILLIONS of insects!!
And, because we booked our tickets via internet there were additional problems… (Murphy’s Law RUUULLAAAAA). We were five but we just have THREE beds!! So, in order to have some rest we were rotating in the beds. Fortunately, during the trip the ticket controller found some free beds so all of us manage to sleep a little bit…

It really seams like a store yeard

Wake up, it's a beautiful morning!!

Regarding the trip back to Bangalore… This was BAD! Our tickets, that we bought via internet, were canceled and we did not have place in the train… (How is this possible??? We don’t know if we Just were not confirmed or they did cancel the tickets… but still…) AND the tickets were totally sold out!! Now imagine the scenario mentioned above plus no place for us to seat!! So we had to do the trip seated on the floor… OF COURSE we tried to speak with all the ticket controllers and to speak with the controllers from others classes, but they just ignored us! AND worse, the ticket controller from the AC class and second class, perhaps he thought he was someone important, he was just speaking to us like we were less then dogs! Like: “You booked sleeper class? Go away! You can not be in the AC class”. Even after telling him that we had with us a lot of money we could pay even for a seat in the first class he was just not listening! I felt so bad because he was treating me like nobody did before!!! He thought he was like a person in a higher place in some kind of hierarchy and he could do everything he wanted!! The readers who know me are just thinking: “was Gonçalo doing anything else?” Typical me: I will make an official complain. I will do everything that I can to make him pay my night in the sleeper class seated on the floor during 10 hours!! I asked him to give me his name and employee number, he just gave me his name (In fact I went to his coat and saw the name in his patch to confirm)! So Mr K. Raja Suba, ticket controller in the Sleeper AC class in the train Hampi Express (Hostped 19.50 - Bangalore 6.15) will suffer the consequences! Even if I have to write one thousand letters I will do it, but he has to pay for that!! You know, force me to move out from the train when there were some available beds… NOT GOOD…. Speak to me like I was some creature under the animal level… EVEN WORSE!