We had arrived a bit early and our track was not yet announced and had some time to kill. At the New Delhi station, they had the tourist booking office that had comfortable chairs and fans to keep you comfortable while you wait for your train. We didn’t know of such a place at the Old Delhi terminal so we just dropped our bags where ever we could squeeze in. Luckily I had some playing cards with me to pass the time and many people were intrigued by our game and even the legless beggar took time to stop and watch on.

Once our track was announced and we located it, we discovered that they had two trains posted for the same track at the same time. Last minute, they switched our train across the platform and when the train arrived everyone started making a mad dash to try to find their assigned car. We had unfortunately been on the exact opposite end of the train and had to run all the way down dodging huge wooden cargo carts, people sleeping on the floor and other frantic passengers. We were relieved to find our bunks and we were very grateful to have anything at all since the train was so full.

We arrived in Ramnagar at 6 am and simply followed the stream of passengers to find our way to the center of town and hopefully the park’s reception office. When we got to the office, there was already a crowd of people trying to get their day pass tickets but they wouldn’t open the office for the muli-day visits until 8:30. Once they opened the window (although they were sitting there the entire time since 6 am) there was a dash once again for the window and it seemed to be every man for him self. We were lucky and got one of the last beds in the cabin that has electricity and dining hall. During our crowd surfing on the line, we met Cecile and Paul from France and Mirko from Germany. We all decided to pitch in for a safari car and driver to lower the costs. We were all people traveling for long periods so every rupee counts!

Finally after 5 hours of waiting in the office and haggling over the price for 3 days in the park with the drivers, we were on our way into the Jim Corbett National Park. It looks like it will be very enjoyable; we got a good price, good company and good weather! It is great to be out of Delhi!

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!

Pahar Ganj in itself is a surprising area to be the tourist hub. The paved roads are eroding back to dirt paths from the constant stream of people, cars, bicycle rickshaws, motorcycle rickshaws and cows. Flies are also surprising, India has over a billion people and probably 100 billion flies. Some areas are so thick with flies that your vision is obscured and worse yet is that they stick to your eyes. The flies must be attracted to all of the cow pies that the sacred animals leave on the streets. Knowing that this is a main tourist strip, I am surprised that they don’t at least try to sweep the streets more if they will have the cows roaming like they do.

This was the way I pictured more rural towns to be, not a busy district in the middle of New Delhi right off one of the main train stations! To be fair, certainly not all of New Delhi is like this. When we were first driving in from the airport we were on brand new 3 lane roads, saw lots of greenery and everything seemed fairly efficient. It is a stark contrast to the area where we are staying. Despite the muck, dilapidation and the chaos, Pahar Ganj was great for us since the rooms are affordable, there are lots of great little eateries around and tons of shopping.

After settling into our room, we set off walking to try to go to the central area. Every time we stopped to try to look at anything somebody would stop and talk to us to try to direct us to the Tourist Bureau and/or Connaught Place. Also along the walk there was a stream of boys who one after another touched my arm and I shouted “STOP”. If we were in Syria I would have shouted “Haram” or forbidden but then again people in Syria wouldn’t have done this.

There were a lot of similarities to Manila for me, so it wasn’t a huge shock . There were a lot of street kids comparable to the amount we would encounter in a Filipino city. The infrastructure and transportation are also extremely alike; the cows are a new twist though.

After all the walking in search of the center where we expected all of the ATMs and restaurants to be, we finally relented and got a taxi. We were tired of all of the people trying to help direct us, the boys bothering me, and the new street children friends that I made that just wouldn’t go away (I was getting hungry and tend to lose my patience when I want food).

We had our first and only all beef-less McDonald’s. Curiosity got the better of us, who could resist a curried McChicken burger?? We spent the rest of the day happily jumping from one State Shopping Emporium to the next. Tomorrow we will make our first attempt at arranging our Indian Rail tickets, which every one makes a big fuss over. Hopefully we will have luck and get all of the tickets we need.