Shared carriage of an Indian train

Alexander Cheban writes: “Are you scolding Russian Railways?! Welcome to the common car of the Indian train! To visit India and not ride a train and, in particular, in a common carriage means to miss an incredibly interesting experience, both in terms of communication and visual images, and the opportunity to fully download your sense of smell, sensation, touch!

Having visited India for the first time in 2007, I tried sleeping cars "without" and "with" air conditioning (Sleeper AC & non-AC), and on this trip I finally got to the General Class of the night train. This is incredibly cool! And the stations... Where else will you see such a station in a small provincial town late at night if not in India?!”

(Total 31 photos)

1. Actually, nothing special, because probably everyone traveled in the common car of our trains ... the only difference is that in India you will meet open and friendly fellow travelers. Some of the independent travelers get into the common car by accident, without taking care of the ticket in advance, and in India tens of thousands of people ride trains every day and the fact that there are no tickets for sleeper classes is a common practice. Judging by the films and what I have seen, common carriages are also filled in different ways, it also happens that passengers hang out of the doors. So, one might say, I was lucky, it was possible to move around the car relatively calmly, although all the seats, upper shelves, vestibules and ... toilets (!) were occupied.

2. But it all starts with buying tickets. I will write a separate article about trains in India, today I will show photos

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4. The “second class” car, also known as the “general class”, is written on the cars this way and that. The train is hot, instead of grilled windows, idle fans under the ceiling. During the passage through the forest belts, all sorts of tropical butterflies and dragonflies fly into the car, which are also quickly blown out by the wind.

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6. Arriving for boarding 40 minutes before departure, my friends and I could not get into the same carriage, so we rode in neighboring ones. As it turned out later, we were lucky that we were sitting at all.

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11. Dim artificial light, high ISO, horrendous white balance… but I deliberately didn’t make a series of black and white, after all, India is, first of all, COLOR!

12. The guys are having dinner in the vestibule. With great difficulty, I was able to refuse the offer to sit next to me. Almost every fellow traveler is friendly, trying to speak, show something, treat me with something ... They even smeared me with paint in the car on the eve of the Holi holiday. Unfortunately, there were only a few people in the car with knowledge of English.

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16. A guy not on the top shelf took too much on the occasion of Holi and always tried to fall down.

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20. An average of 5-6 Indians sit on the bottom shelf, although the shelf is the same size as in our reserved seat (for 3 seats). On the floor, someone goes to bed, and so in almost every "coupe"

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26. The station is a different story. A huge number of people spend the night here, there are times when you just need to step over sleeping bodies in order to move forward.

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28. Chief conductor's office

29. What did you see in the photos?! Unsanitary conditions, dirt, felt an unpleasant smell?!

30. Most likely you will be right, but I saw a piece of real India, met pleasant interlocutors and even sent photos to my fellow travelers. Throw away stereotypes and complexes, try to feel the country from different angles.

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