Eventually we had to leave the comfortable shell of The Hyatt. A half hour taxi ride later we were at Chandigarh railway station waiting for The Paschim Express to Amritsar. We had first class seats! The station was concrete, chaotic and bewildering. No platform numbers. A single dubious departures board. We got there early but it would have been better if we hadn’t. The station was being developed. We knew this because of the sound of circular saw on concrete so deafening a train could have come and gone unnoticed. Our train was a sleeper but we weren’t travelling at night. Although we bought the tickets months ago, the seat allocations are “published” 4 hours before departure. You can find them somewhere in the station (we didn’t) or on an obscure Indian app. Thank heavens for Chat GPT who directed us to the right app. Why is archaic seat allocation continuing like this? I don’t know, but I know it isn’t done manually so that seat allocation is the most sensible for people travelling together because Sarah and I were allocated different coaches. The train arrived and we were standing exactly where the first class coach stopped. At least that bit worked. I went in my coach where there was one person perched on the top bunk. Sarah went in the next coach where a whole family looked like they had been dug in for the last 200 miles. So Sarah came in with me. The coaches were set up for 4 people, 2 up and 2 down but if not sleeping, 2 people could sit on the bottom bunk. We shared the coach with a young lad, 20 something who had recently done his masters and was heading for his first job as a teacher. He was great company but he got off at the next stop. The conductor came along and had no interest at all in seat allocation so we had a coach to ourselves for the next 4 hours. First class! No food, no drink, not a sausage!
