Today was a very laid back day. We woke up very late, it was nearly noon by the time we got to breakfast. We leisurely made our way over to the train terminal and popped into some shops along the way. Sure enough, as we got closer to the train station, people tried pointing us to the ticket office, which is actually the wrong office. I still don’t know what they actually do in this wrong office, maybe they sell fake tickets? Thankfully we already knew exactly where we needed to go to make our bookings.
The intimidating and ridiculous Indian Rail System in the end proved to be rather smooth. The wall of the office has an array of hand painted numbers which represent a certain train line and time. Our train to Ramnagar for the Tiger Park of course was nowhere to be seen on this wall. We simply just followed their requested procedure. First we filled out the forms which required our personal details and these mysterious train numbers which we are magically to know. We then take these forms to the man at the desk closest to the door. He then enters our desired travel dates and destinations in and thankfully was knowledgeable of the train numbers. He then writes the specific train number on each of our routes and we then take these forms to the furthest desks to another man. He then enters in the same information, double checks our routes, times, dates, and ages (apparently age is important and listed on our tickets) and finally prints our tickets. All in all it went smoothly and we successfully managed to get all the train tickets we need for our time in India.
We are looking forward to getting out to Ramnagar and the tiger park. So far, our experience has been more commercial and limited compared to Nepal where I think we were able to become better acquainted with the people and their way of life. We may not get the chance to interact with many people in the park but it will be nice to get out in nature and actually see the sky…maybe even a tiger or two!
