Indian Trains

 Trains in India possess a special magic. Only on a train can you feel the energy of the common Indian people. Besides, Indian trains and railway journeys have a number of features and surprises...
   Train tickets can be easily bought online. The printed e-ticket needs to be shown to the conductor, who occasionally appears in the carriage (if, of course, he can get through).

  We made all our journeys on "sleeper" class trains. The peculiarity of this type is that there is no conductor assigned to this carriage. Therefore, the number of people often exceeds the number of seats, which doesn't really bother anyone, as you have your designated seats and can occupy them fully without anyone saying a word. The only exception was one case when our journey coincided with the start of the Diwali festival. Then the number of people far exceeded the number of seats in the carriage, and it didn't seem right to evict people from their spots...

   But if you choose only the upper berths, such a situation won't cause much inconvenience, as there is no such rush up there...

  The carriages are relatively clean, and each compartment has six "sleeper" berths. The middle berth serves as a backrest during the day and as a sleeping place at night, as well as a spot for a person on the lower berth to hit their head... It's best to choose the upper berths, where you can comfortably place both your backpack and your body, as the berths are quite wide... 

   There are fans on the ceiling, which save you from the heat and are deadly in cold weather if not turned off...

   You can also travel with the windows open and watch the Indian landscapes or go to the vestibule, where the doors are always open...

  An interesting feature in an Indian train is the lists of selected passengers posted on the carriage doors. These printouts allow you to confirm that you are indeed a lucky participant in the Indian railway cruise, which transports more than 7 billion passengers a year...

  Tickets can also be purchased at ticket offices, but that's for true lovers of standing in line, pushing, and swearing...

 In India, it's customary to throw trash on the tracks, within the limits of the stations it's cleaned up by one of the 1.6 million employees working on the railway...

   Train journeys and everything associated with them left very good impressions. On the train, we saw how the majority of Indians travel and how bustling they are. Calmly getting off the train is not their style; they have to push and jump off the train even before it comes to a complete stop. Also, the train became a place for random acquaintances, a place for sleep and wakefulness, adding another coin to the piggy bank of our invaluable experience...