A passage through India

Scott MacMillan rides the Himsagar Express, which travels through 10 states from Jammu in the north to Kanyakumari at India's southern tip.

The conductor sounds the "all aboard" horn as a full moon rises over the plains of Jammu, the region in India's far north nestled against the Himalayas. With passengers still settling into their berths, the Himsagar Express pulls out of the station at 11.45pm, not a minute late. On board India's longest single-trip train ride, we're sharing an alcove with a Rajasthani family returning from holiday in Kashmir - eight bodies stuffed onto three levels of a space barely two metres long by three metres wide. The train is packed with villagers and city folk, rich and poor, pilgrims, soldiers, scientists and businessmen - a microcosm of India herself - all rocked to sleep by a rhythmic clatter that won't end for another 3,720km, when the train pulls into the terminus at Kanyakumari, India's southernmost tip, 71 hours from now. Over three days in early July, the country reveals itself both in the passing scenery and in a rotating cast of fellow travellers. Riding India's trains creates an unparalleled opportunity to interact with a broad spectrum of its billion-plus population, and you'll learn things that no guidebook would ever tell you. Like that Punjabis are nuts about Mercedes. This and more I discuss with Anubhan Jindal, a 20-something Punjabi I meet the first morning in the vestibule of the next car over, when we're already hurtling through the plains of Punjab toward Delhi.

I'm well-rested, for I've had the fortune of riding in an air-conditioned coach. Here in regular sleeper class, a notch down in luxury, the scorching air whooshes through the carriage like a hair dryer turned on full blast. Jindal boarded in the early morning at Ludhiana, a city of two million dubbed "the Manchester of India" for its prowess in textiles, home to factories spinning clothes for Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Reebok and a thousand other brands.

As irrigated wheat fields rush past the open doorway, Jindal seems like the portrait of India's upwardly mobile middle class. Working as a sales executive for a Ludhiana-based manufacturer with a large Reebok contract, he pulls in US$427 (Dh1,567) per month, not bad considering about 40 per cent of the Indian population lives on less than $40 monthly. He confirms what I've heard elsewhere: that Punjab contains the largest concentration of Mercedes cars in the country, for its countryside is India's breadbasket and its cities plump with industrial cash. "Punjabis are totally rich people and they only want to show it," Jindal says. He'll probably get a Mercedes after a few years, he adds. "It's not the car I want. I want a Scorpio [a high-end Indian SUV], but it's not all about me. Maybe my family will want one and I'll get it for them." On the Himsagar, one passes the time in conversations like these, more revealing than a thousand cookie-cutter snapshots of the Taj Mahal. Granted, travelling in such close quarters isn't for everybody. Expect no turbaned waiters serving sumptuous curries on crisp white tablecloths in private compartments. At $47 (Dh174) for a sleeping berth in air-conditioned three-tier class, this is unadulterated India, warts and all, with cockroaches in the pantry car and washrooms consisting of squat toilets emptying directly onto the track. Compulsive hand-washers would be advised to bring along several tubs of antibacterial gel. The word "Himsagar", a compound of the Hindu words for "snow" and "sea", is something of a misnomer, for the Indian Railways network doesn't yet reach the snowy heights of the Himalayas. At the Himsagar's northern terminus, Jammu itself is hotter than a fresh chapatti and nearly as flat. Work continues on a rail line extending to Srinagar, a city nestled in the Kashmir vale 300km to the north, but the Indians have been planning this project since the days when Krishna walked the earth, and it's anyone's guess when it will be finished. That said, this is still the undisputed granddaddy of all Indian train rides, crossing 10 states in all. It cuts a swathe through the plains of Punjab and Haryana on its first day, stopping in Delhi and Agra before traversing the great Deccan plateau of peninsular India. In Andhra Pradesh, it reaches the eastern coastal plains before plunging back across the peninsula, through the hills of Tamil Nadu to the western wetlands of Kerala, before coming down to a final stop at land's end, Kanyakumari. Along the way, one whiles away the hours happily captivated by a civilisation arguably richer in cultural wonders than any other on earth. Here, for instance, is KM Thangaraju, clad in loose folds of orange cloth, shirtless, a turban atop an unkempt greying mane, a hairy chest draped with a peach-cream scarf, and a beard worthy of Tolkein. Thangaraju represents another archetype of the Indian traveller: the religious pilgrim. The Himsagar carries flocks of the devout going to and from India's myriad holy places, from Amarnath in the north to Tirupathi and Kanyakumari in the south. A former police inspector from Tamil Nadu, Thangaraju is now a sanyassi, or renunciate, one who has forsaken worldly concerns to become a full-time spiritual seeker. Initiated into the secret meditation technique of kriya yoga, he speaks with the booming stentorian tones of scripture. "I have no religion, I have no caste, and I have no country," he intones. "I am a universal person beyond all distinctions." I soon take to calling him swamiji, a title of respect for a holy man.

With a group of 11 pilgrims, Swami Thangaraju is riding the Himsagar from Jammu to Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, a 58-hour journey home from the Amarnath yatra, a popular but arduous Himalayan pilgrimage to a cave where a natural ice lingam, a symbol of the god Shiva - something like a holy stalagmite - waxes and wanes with the moon's cycle. Perhaps a holdover from his life as an inspector, he describes the journey using the language of a police blotter: "We reached Baltal at 19-hundred hours. We rested that night. The weather is inclement, chilled and cold." And so on, onto a detailed description of walking the final 18km "full of bodily pain, mental torture and agony." As the train approaches Delhi, the mountainous terrain the swami describes is a world apart from the landscape on either side, for there's nary a hillock to be seen on the horizon. The northern plain is a vital feature of subcontinental geography, a vast fertile crescent from the Ganges delta in Bangladesh to the mouth of the Indus at Karachi, -Pakistan. The water parting between the two river basins, located near Delhi, lies a mere 274m above sea level, which means the entire plain, from delta to delta, is about as flat as a cricket pitch, sloping mere inches per kilometre. Though hardly picturesque, the population of three countries would likely starve without these endless fecund flatlands. Settlements, slums and trash heaps come right up to the tracks as we enter the capital. Behind schedule, the Himsagar makes up lost time in Delhi by cutting short two long scheduled stops. Were the train running punctually, it would theoretically be possible to hop off in Delhi at 1.15pm, take a taxi to Agra for around $50 (Dh184), watch the sun set on the Taj Mahal, then jump back onto the same train at Agra station at 6.35pm. We don't risk it. No matter, for we're better off here on the train. As the hours go by, we start to become more acquainted with the other long-haulers. The Rajasthani family in our cabin disembarks at Delhi, replaced by a host of new characters with whom we share the alcove for most of the next two days; a group that highlights the geographic mobility of Indians who can afford to travel in AC class. There's a bookish KB Sreenath, 23, who hails from Cochin, Kerala, and works for a government agency in Delhi on Aids research; for most of his 52-hour journey home, he reads photo-copied pages from a biology textbook. Naresh Suriana, 29, a cardboard box manufacturer who lives near Coimbatore, and his wife Seema, met and married in the south, though both come from Rajasthan. Two Keralan soldiers, meanwhile, are stationed on the other side of the country in Srinagar, probably the least coveted post in the Indian Army. Meanwhile, of the train staff, I take an instant liking to M Laguri, the AC technician. Like the James Bond character, he never does tell us his first name, but M is a reassuring presence throughout the ride, periodically passing through our compartment brandishing a flathead screwdriver. A visit to the pantry car finds the kitchen managed by an authoritarian Sikh who shouts "no photos!" whenever our cameras emerge - no surprise, given the cockroaches that congregate here. The curries and birianis are delicious nonetheless.

Actually, the travelling culinary fare is part of the appeal of Indian railways. Food and drink vendors roam the platforms and corridors, their circus-like cries often hard to decipher, hawking hot tea ("garam chai, garam chai!"), cold drinks and food from the pantry car. The beverage man sings a short song that sounds like a flat bird call ending with "ding ding". Upon repeated listening we figure out he's saying, "Paniii, cooling-drink-fruiteee," or roughly translated, "I've got bottled water (pani) and cold drinks, including fruit-flavoured carbonated beverages." Certain stops are famous for particular platform nibbles. At the recommendation of the locals, I purchase a box of "Agra's Famous Special Petha," or crystallised pumpkin, for 50 rupees (about $1 or Dh4). I feel like a trick has been played, for the soft white chunks taste sickeningly like pure processed sugar, no hint of pumpkin to be discerned. I can't even finish one, and despite my insistent offers, the Indians don't want any either. "Agra petha is an invitation to tooth decay," clucks Seema, the wife of the cardboard box man. The information would have been helpful earlier. As the sun sets on our first day of travel, it's still stiflingly hot outside the cocoon of our AC carriage, but when we wake up the next morning near Nagpur, India's geographic centre, we literally find a changed atmosphere. Though we're still far inland, the outside temperature has dropped about 10 degrees. It's one of the oddities of India's climate that during the summer monsoon season, it gets cooler as you move toward the equator. Greenery now undulates on either side of the tracks, although the scenery is often blighted by shantytowns, trash heaps and a welter of new constructions, with rebar protruding from half-built houses. Feeling like part of the train's furniture by now, we venture into next door's sleeper class carriage to see who's joined us during the night. In the wee hours at Bhopal, a group of 24 boarded, the Goswamis, the Lakheras and the Lodhis, three -generations of three extended families on pilgrimage to Kanyakumari. The patriarchs, each around 60, became friends working for the government service 20 years ago, and despite coming from different castes, their families have joined together for a massive outing. The Bhopal clans provide some of the best company of the trip, for they make a lively scene of never-ending commotion. Elderly women sing -devotional songs as their grandchildren pile onto one another's laps, jostling for space on the blue nylon cushions; the older girls, a visual symphony of blowing scarves and saris in saffron, teal and crimson, pass the hours with decorative hand painting called mehendi. Despite all the women of marriageable age, Shailendra Goswami, an unmarried man of 23, laughs at my naivety when I suggest the shared journey might spark some romance. Last names signify castes, and Shailendra's future wife can be neither Lodhi nor Lakhera. "I can only marry a Goswami girl," he says. The hours roll on as the bogies trundle down the peninsula. That afternoon, we cross the border between Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, a major cultural divide, for in a country of hundreds of languages and dialects, South India starts here, where dominance of Indic languages (Hindi, Punjabi and Marathi) gives way to the Dravidian group (Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam). It's a culinary frontier, as well, for increasingly we hear cries that sound like "dosaad-livadee, dosaad-livadee!" It's actually the three staples of south Indian cuisine: dosa, a rice pancake; idly, a steamed cake made from rice and fermented black lentils; and vada or vadai, a lentil or gram flour doughnut. As we enter the south, one of the main topics of conversation becomes Tirupati, a stop on the route. Ask most non-Indians to name the world's most visited pilgrimage site and they're likely to say Mecca or perhaps the Vatican, but they'd be wrong, for it's Tirupathi, located in the Tirumalai Hills about 100km north-west of Chennai. The town's Sri Venkatesvara Temple sees tens of thousands of visitors daily paying homage to a god popularly known as Tirupati Balaji, said to be the world's richest deity. In addition to wealth, Balaji supposedly has the power - and, if you chop your hair off and offer it to him, the inclination - to grant most any wish, be it good health, material gain or a high exam score.

Rajesh Kumar Gupta, 43, already earns a respectable $820 (Dh3,008) a month from various businesses, but wants to become "a person of great means, so my name is known all over the world," he says. "I pray to Tirupati Balaji to get more, more, more!" His daughter Denira, 19, meanwhile, is praying to become an officer in the Indian Administration Services, but there's one problem, for she's not ready to give up the black hair that flows halfway down her back. She says she'll see if she can donate just a portion. "I can't give my entire hair. How would I live? People will laugh at me." Approaching the Bay of Bengal near Vijayawada, one senses a difference in the air - perhaps a shift in air pressure as it becomes cooler and less dry. A minstrel woman appears, singing for pocket change, adding a touch of melancholy to the changed atmosphere with a stirring love song. (Somebody identifies it as "Tum To Thehre Pardesi, Saath Kya Nibhaoge" from the 1996 Bollywood film Raja Hindustani.) And as though the minstrel herself were a divine herald, it suddenly starts to rain. The train has run smack into the monsoon. As we near the final stretch, I realise the train, despite its cramped discomfort, has taken on a homelike quality. Back at my own berth, I run into M again. No, he says, I may not drive the train. He won't even let me visit the engine room. "The driver is very busy," he says. I'm sad, not because I actually expected to sit in the driver's seat, but because I realise this journey might actually be ending too soon. On the third and final day, we awake to the verdant hills of Tamil Nadu and the riot of colours that mark the deep south. Orange-red flowers explode like fireworks on the tree known as "flame of the forest" alongside houses painted in a palette of pastel shades. Cutting back across the peninsula to the western coast, the train bursts through the Palakkad Gap, the only break in the Western Ghats, the mountain range that isolates the rural wetlands of Kerala from the Tamil hinterland. I celebrate our entry into Kerala with pazhampuri, the speciality of Palakkad station: bananas battered and deep-fried, sweet with a hint of cinnamon. As we barrel down the Keralan coast - backwater habitations coming right up to the tracks amid forests of coconut palms and banana trees, hung laundry trying desperately to dry in the damp air - it seems the entire world has become a conspiracy of green. We pull into Kanyakumari a few minutes early, about 10.25pm, and crash at a $4-a-night pilgrim's lodge facing the sea, just 500m from where the Arabian Sea meets the Bay of Bengal. All of Kanyakumari is a swirl of pilgrims' colours the next morning as we mingle at the seaside with visitors from across India, including the Goswamis, the Lakheras and the Lodhis. On an island off the cape, a massive statue of the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar makes a dramatic stand in the fog as the restive waters beat upon the rocks at the subcontinent's tip. The song of the wandering minstrel still echoes in my head, though it's only later that I find out what the words mean. "You're just a visitor," the singer asks her beloved. "What kind of companionship can you offer?" Looking out at the Indian Ocean with over a billion voices to my back, the question weighs heavily, for the breadth of India is such that no foreigner can ever make more than a passing acquaintance - not in a lifetime, not in several. Passengers on the Himsagar Express barely scratch the surface of the many worlds it crosses, but the reverse is hardly true, for the traveller himself is smitten to the core. travel@thenational.ae

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