Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Was it only a week ago I was sitting on a train from Ranthambore back to Delhi? Somehow it seems almost like another lifetime ago. After touring Northern India for most of November and experiencing the clamour and chaos, Ranthambore seemed like an oasis. We'd had to get up early for the safaris to see tigers - which we were lucky enough to - but the excitement and thrill still seemed a lot less chaotic than the rest of our encounter with such a lively bustling country. The evenings relaxing in a sunny garden with a swimming pool and bar prepared us for the long journey home.
However, back to the train. During our tour we travelled on coaches, in taxis, internal flights and a fair few trains. Ah, the trains . . .
Quite a few people mention various rail journey programmes on tv, particularly the Portillo ones. In fact, we even met fellow travellers who were on a Great Train Journeys package tour. We, of course, had never watched any of these televisual feasts so were generally bemused. We actually did travel on the narrow gauge Toy Train from Shimla down to Chandigarh, much as the irritating ex-Tory MP had. That was quite pleasant, just a bit more cramped. But it is the noise of train journeys that made an impact on me.
The opportunity to look out of the windows and take in the huge landscapes we were travelling through was quite stimulating. Once we were out of the environs of the main cities I could observe the comings and goings of daily life. Yes, the huge amount of garbage, particularly plastic bottles, was astonishing. There were posters at the stations proclaiming an end of plastic waste by July 2022. I'm guessing that's a target that will forever remain out of reach. Given the fact that every time we got in a taxi, hotel room, coach and train, we were handed a plastic bottle of water. As it really isn't safe to drink water for Westerners other than bottled water, there is a huge problem of waste creating a huge elephant in the room for their government. As we travelled along I observed small towns and rural areas strewn with litter. The Edgelands are an area of interest to me and I will return to the subject soon.
The bustling stations and streets often gave way to massive fields, many of which reminded me of much of the UK. Yes, really. There were several large towns with tower blocks of flats that reminded me of Stevenage New Town in the1970s: High Plash, Brent Court transposed to the rural edgelands of the sub continent. Flooded fields, rivers, pylons strewn across the landscape, random solitary trees, hedges used as field borders all often seemed familiar. Except the scale, of course.
Then there was the excitement of watching black kites over the towns, the common mynas, hundreds of egrets and occasionally various storks flying over or standing idly in fields Black storks, white storks, black-necked or yellow-billed storks. All very exciting indeed.
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Ours is the blue one! |
Meanwhile, during these lengthy train journeys, often between four to eight hours, there was the noise. The carriages were usually packed - train travel is very popular in India. The ubiquity of noise on the trains astonished me to be honest. Everyone appeared to be on their phones. The world domination of personal phones has a lot to answer for! Hundreds of different ring tones, so many people all shouting in to them, pinging, ringing, humming buzzing constantly. On top of that is the perpetual chanting up and down the carriage, "Chai, chai, coffee, chai! Lamb cutlet, lamb cutlet. . . tomato soup, tomato soup, chai, chai!" There were many other delicacies on offer but spoken, belted out in Hindu too. My head was ringing too from all the noise. Some people seemed to be playing videos and songs - no headphones in sight at all. Just a constant cacophony.
My mind travelled back in time to when I used to travel a lot on trains. I used to love going on long train journeys. Growing up in Stevenage and being so close to major rail routes, especially into London, and as a non-driver for many years, allowed a rather romantic notion of train travel to develop. I travelled to St Ives in Cornwall a few memorable times, Edinburgh and beyond, and London itself was a regular trip. When I had friends who lived in London, I could often be back home before them so short was the train journey (25 minutes). But that was in the age before the ubiquity of mobile phones.
Travelling in the past seems to me now to have been a much quieter and calmer experience. Peaceful, almost. Thinking back to, say, a journey down to St Ives in 1973, people sat on the train reading newspapers or books (that was me), doing the crossword, occasionally talking quietly so as not to disturb fellow travellers. There were no portable methods of music beyond transistor radios then. Nobody ever seemed to play them. Earphones were available of course, so maybe some people did listen to them. I never did or noticed others doing so. Sometimes a conversation could be struck up between strangers. I still remember a few conversations (I used such an experience in a song not long ago). Occasionally the ticket inspector came along and politely, quietly, asked to check your ticket. When we pulled in to a station there was a little bit of kerfuffle and disturbance as travellers got on or off. Cases were placed in the rack and a newspaper was rustled to find the crossword. A harrumph here and there if a baby cried or a toddler spoke out of turn. But the general ambience of a train journey was of a calm atmosphere. There was a politeness and general feeling of almost tranquillity; a time to think and get totally lost in your own thoughts. Or fall asleep and miss your stop. That happened too! I remember travelling back from a gig at the Marquee with my mate Andy late one night (yes, a school night) and we espied our dreaded headmaster on the same train. He fell asleep before Stevenage. We got off quietly and closed the door as silently as we could. We watched the train depart - next stop Peterborough. Despite what he told Andy, he didn't get off the train at Stevenage. A well-deserved payback.
Anyway, calm travelling, what we would call Slow Travel nowadays I guess, seems to be a thing of the past. Even so-called "quiet carriages" appear to be a misnomer, evidently. Modern train journeying in the UK may not be quite as raucous and chaotic as my experience in India but I think long gone are the days of calm reflective excursions where one felt whole books could have been written on those long tranquil journeys. Little noise; and just the gentle rhythmical movement of the train to lull you gently into a reverie.
The train goes running along the line,
Jicketty-can, jicketty-can,
I wish it were mine, I wish it were mine,
Jicketty-can, jicketty-can.
The Engine Driver stands in front -
He makes it run, he makes it shunt;
Out of the town,
Out of the town,
Over the hill,
Over the down,
Under the bridges,
Across the lea,
Over the bridges And down to the sea,
With a jicketty-can, jicketty-can,
Jicketty-jicketty-jicketty-can,
Jicketty-can, jicketty-can . . .*
* Clive Sansom (1965) A poem my children loved at bedtimes.
