An experience of lifetime

Frankly speaking, the following blogpost mite be boring for you fellas but then again, I could not control myself from writing this one either, so bear with it ☺

Well, staying at home is a refreshing change for hostellers which when comes after a period of six months is rather more so. But planning an extended stay is, trust me, not that easy.

Ok, when I had to postpone my journey for a week because of some out of the blue circumstances, a tatkal ticket was the only option as it seemed of getting a reservation. Only then I came to know that getting a tatkal ticket is possible even a week ahead of your journey. What one needs is to bribe the person that issues tickets inside the railway reservation counter through some travel agent. Thats power of contacts plus money for you.

The catch was that such ticket could only be made from Delhi to Bangalore and not Jhansi, as I preferred. Anyway, I decided to board it from Jhansi as it cuts my journey time short. Alas, we’ll see later how sensible it was.

1 o’clock, was the time Rajdhani express crosses Jhansi and keeping with the same I booked a Lucknow-Jhansi intercity which supposedly reaches at 10:30 so that I have a good 2-2.5 hours backup. I was all relaxed and contend, packing my stuff on that morning, when Verma Uncle came to see dad and asked me about my return travel plans. On hearing the same he told me that the intercity train I was planning to board was quite unreliable and I should rather not trust it.

What he advised me, instead, was to take a so-called Shatabdi bus service from Kanpur, which would take no more than 4.5 hrs to reach Jhansi from Kanpur. He also told he that the last Shatabdi bus departed around 7 o’ clock from Kanpur.

Trusting Verma Uncle and his (experienced!!) advice I decided the follow what he told. I gallantly reached Kanpur bus stand at 5:30 and at around 6 o’clock I was there at Shatabdi Bus service’s booking office. Destiny as they call it, this person at the office tells me that the bus that leaves on 6:30 will only reach at 1:30 since the roads were pathetic (left for me, to be discovered). I was literally stunned and taken aback, for a second I did not know what to do, a distance of around 300 kms was still pending and I was standing on the outskirts of Kanpur having no idea of what transport I m going to take for Jhansi. I called up our torchbearer, Verma Uncle to throw some light on the situation. He told me that I can take any UP roadways bus and I had enough time to make it. After 15 minutes a Jhansi depot bus shows up, i hurriedly jumped into the same, only to find that it was of the breed of most thakeli buses. Fifteen minutes later the conductor showed up from nowhere amongst in the typical rural junta the aroma of which smelled only nicotine and booze, only to give another twist to my fairy tale. He told me that the bus would only go till Orai, which was on the way to Jhansi and assured me that I would easily get a bus to Jhansi from there. He tells me that this bus would take three hours to Orai and from Orai,Jhansi was another 3 hours. I looked at my watch,it was already 6:30 .Another six hours would mean 12:30 considering no time gap between connecting buses and then another thirty mins to move to the railway station from the bus station. All this makes the best-case expected time to reach Jhansi exactly 1o’clock.I knew I was hard-pressed on time now and confess that I was stressed to the core. The stress just got aggravated as I figured out that this bus would stop at every rural stoppage and at full speed it would never cross the 20 km/hr mark. My tension was mounting throughout the journey and reached its peak when the bus reached only at 10 o’clock at Orai, the bus station which paid homage to my first visit there by giving me the utmost deserted look as if it did not want me there ☺. Now the next bus to Jhansi was in an hour and it was no way I could make it with that bus in time. I looked around for taxis, etc bus the place was so deserted and dimly lit, it wore a look that told me every second, ashish, you can’t reach now, you have made a blunder. I consulted with some fellow passengers who suggested to stay at Orai for the night and decide the next day about the further course of action, since they believed that whole Orai was dead by this time and there was no way now that I could reach in time. But something inside told me that I can’t give up on this, there must be someway out of the situation. I just stood there on the road to Jhansi with my luggage, like wishfully hoping for a Ferrari to stop by, offer me a lift and drive at some 100 km/hr and make me reach on time ☺. It was around 10:30 now and that hardly gave around 2-2.5 hrs for me to reach Jhansi station that now looked impossible. A truck driver in the meanwhile came by but told he would take at least 3 hrs to reach since they had to take dinner on the way. I was still standing stranded there, I had lost hope but something inside me told that I should stay. As my mind was now pressurizing my heart and its I began to realized that I would have to stay back at Orai and all my plans were spoiled now. Just when I was about to take a rickshaw to search for a hotel to stay at, a guy came from nowhere and asked “kahan jaayenge saab”,to which I irritatingly replied “tere rickshaw se nahi pahuch paayenge Jhansi”. Actually this guy was driver of a Marshall, which was parked little away and he was sleeping in it. After some negotiation he agreed at 1000 Rs, yes the economics demand and supply rule played its full part here and only condition I had was that I will pay him only if I reach Jhansi station before 1 o’clock. He was reluctant at first but then this guy agreed. Very same moment this middle aged uncle walks from nowhere and asks me to kindly drop him around midway. I agreed and we were about to start.

Just then, my phone rings, it was our Verma Uncle who called in from nowhere and advised me not to take full taxis from Orai since the place was not safe. He also told me about an earlier incident there when a person previously known to the driver accompanied the customer asking him to drop him on the way. I was stunned but then again by this time we had started. One good thing was that I had also met the actual owner of that Marshall before we took off but then Verma Uncle’s explanation of those incidents was doing Merry-go-rounds inside my brain. I prayed to god silently with my eyes closed for a minute, I think I must mention here that I don’t visit temples by choice since I believe in having more of a direct connect with god and praying sincerely rather that zeroing on some temple and praying inside that. So here I was, in the middle of a deserted highway with only dim lights ,trucks ,buses, our driver ,that uncle and that Marshall with this guy driving at more than 70 km/hr consistently on a pathetic road with poor visibility because of dim fog. One thing I was doing was that I was continuously conversing with that uncle and driver about the places they belong, the work they do and other stuff. Meanwhile out of nowhere I also bluffed that my dad was SP, Lucknow circle just to feel safe.

Good thing that this driver did with the speed was that he rekindled within me the hope of reaching on time and I knew if he continued at the same speed I had chances of reaching the Jhansi railway station in time.

Well for one more twist, there was a traffic jam, at around 12:30 which played spoil sport for some 10 minutes on the way, but the driver amazingly dropped me at 1 o clock sharp only to find that my train was delayed by some 30 mins, I cold afford a smile now, yes I could.

When I was waiting for my train, I met this guy,Gaurav Arora with whom in 20 minutes I became good friends, we exchanged mail ids and phone numbers and he even gave me the novel he was reading. My train came and all I was looking for, now, was to have a good night’s sleep after the almost perfect (☺) travel till Jhansi.

Unforeseen, as the nature of the day was, reinforced itself when I found that my reserved seat had been allotted to some other person as I did not turn up at Delhi, yes my travel agent had forgotten to mention it to the ticket issuer that I’ll be boarding from Jhansi. I spoke to him for some time but he said he could not help and railway’s rules were to wait only 200 kms for a passenger and Jhansi was around 300 kms from Delhi. I somehow after a lot of struggle, which actually was the flavor of the day found a place I could share with another RAC passenger which was actually a store where food inventory was kept .The Rajdhani waiters had arranged for mattress and quilt, I had tipped them 20 Rupees for that .I could somehow manage to play hide and seek with my sleep in the night.

The next morning came with a big smile, as I now found Shashank on the way, got a new seat allotted from the TTE and can scribble my story as a blog only because I was successful to catch the train and the story had a happy ending.

Biggest moral of the story for me is to plan your journeys carefully and stick to them. Also at the end of it all destiny is the biggest emperor. Had it not been for that guy who suddenly out of nowhere came with a Marshall, I would certainly not be writing this stuff now. Rather I would be exploring hotel options and replanning my return trip from Orai.

Want to thank you people for going through such a terribly long post, but if you could scribble some words as comments it would be very encouraging for a novice like me ☺