Grabbing some fruit & water from the train station, we boarded into the 2nd class non-AC sleeper car. On schedule, the train rocked into motion, bound for its final destination of Jaisalmer. Bordering the train tracks were small, shabby-looking dwellings - a large contrast to the tree and flower-lined spacious boulevards and stately buildings we saw a few hours earlier. As evening descended, the windows were closed to prevent the mosquitoes and dust from entering. The fan above only operated at a high speed, so I was particularly grateful for the bedsheet I had brought along. Despite the repeated stops (Express doesn’t mean direct without stops), noise, occasional smells from the bathroom, and requests to show our ticket, we somehow managed to get a few hours of sleep.The emerging colors of dawn beckoned me to sit up. Before us was a vastly different landscape. The green of Delhi was replaced by brown barren-looking earth, interrupted by occasional scrubby trees or huts constructed of stone slabs or mud. Carefully piled stones or fences made out of the same vertical stone slabs demarcated the fields. Wheat grew in some fields, with the mostly female workers harvesting by
hand, gathering bundles together likely in much the same way as they did in Biblical times. The train stopped for various intervals, with the train begging to empty as we neared our desert destination. A life-blood of these Indian towns, the small train stations enabled us to glimpse part of its events: a young woman brightly clad in a odhni scarf and matching sari talking on her cell phone with her bonnet-clad infant looking up at her with his eyeliner-decorated eyes, two wrinkled men wearing red turbans chatting as they sip sweet tea, and a woman patiently squatting on the platform with a watch peeking through the large collection of bangles around her wrist. To one side of the track I see men already taking their first tea break of the day, pausing from their labor of constructing a track using concrete railroad ties. As the train once again begins, we pass by a truck carrying a mound of colorful mattresses. Children run towards the train and wave, excitedly pointing as we wave back.
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