Patna - the nightmare city

Well, you might be wondering what this post is going to be about, only text, without any pics, when we only spent a day inbetween trains in Patna, but we thought it was about time to fill you in on why our - and particularly my - appreciation of this country has changed so dramatically over time. Patna is simply a very good example because everything terrible that usually happens within a couple of days happened all within a couple of hours there.

Ideally, we wanted to leave Varanasi and travel directly to New Jalpaiguri (NJG) but even though we had tried 2 weeks in advance and had spent, as usual about an hour on the terrible website of the train company and another hour in a travel agency, we couldn't get any train tickets for this connection. There are definitely too many people living in this country! Thus, we had to take another detour and our initial plan (for which we had the tickets) was to take a 5-hour train to Patna, arrive there around 8 pm and leave around 10pm with another train for NJG arriving there the next morning. After several rather nasty experiences with the Indian rail system, we knew in advance that this plan would never work out because trains here have always so much delay. We thus changed our second train ticket to leave a day later and we thought we were safe from any surprises.

Well, never think you are safe from surprises in India. As you might remember, we had already spent one night not spleeping on the train going to Varanasi,we spent one night there getting up at 4.30 in the morning and that afternoon, we were to take the train at 3pm arriving in Patna at 8pm. When we got to the train station after the usual struggle for a Rickshaw with the least horrible prices and a fear for every cm of our body that might stick out during the drive and get ripped off, a nice female voice announced: "For your kind attention please: Train Number 2506 going from Delhi to xyz via Varanasi and Patna is now scheduled to arrive 2 hours late. We are sorry for any inconvenience." So far so go. We sat down on the quay, David intending to do some Sudoku,I intending to write in my diary, but after about two seconds we were surrounded by a group of Indian men, maybe 10-15, keeping a distance of about 20cm and all starring at us as if we had a very terrible disease, distorted figures - no, that is not even true, if you were a halfway decent person you would not stare at anyone or anything like that. Of course, they also couldn't help it and had to spit all around us while continuing to stare at us - I decidedly felt like an animal in a zoo. Soon, we also attracked a nice group of beggars who took turns to stand in front of us at about 20cm distance, tuck our sleeves, pick our arms, and asking us for money. They were followed by a crowd of shoe-cleaners, fruit vendors and all kind of doubious sales' persons... Somehow, we blocked all the quay and people considered walking up to us just in order to see what was happening. Hello, I am just a regular person of this earth waiting for a train... After about 30 minutes, when nothing had changed, we finally got up because we couldn't stand it anymore and moved to a waiting area we were not supposed to use. However, we wanted to see the person to move us out of there and back into the main train station! The nice female voice continued to inform us that all trains were arriving late which meant that we heard her talk without interruption for..well, for 6 hours, because our train finally arrived at 9 pm in the evening....

Frustrated and in a terrible state because of my illness, we mounted the train to set up our beds and sleep for at least 5 hours. I set the alarm clock on 2 am even though I was sure that by that time our train would be even more delayed but as nobody comes to wake you up at your station you have to make sure that you don't miss it yourself. Lucky for us, the railway had decided that for once they wanted to have a clean train, so soon after we had laid down, they started to clean the train and shout from one end of the compartment to the other. This procedure having finished our sleeping time was reduced to about 3 hours and I felt really well when waking up at 2am. Around 3am we arrived in Patna but amost failed to leave the train, not because I had fallen asleep again, but because 8 people with luggage for 12 stormed into our compartment (they are always for 8 people) and started shouting at us that we had taken their beds. Well, of course we had, they were ours till Patna but as Indians are never considerate (and sometimes seem rather stupid even though I think they are just ignorant and egoistic) their pride would forbit them to let us get our backpacks and get out of the train before they got in. They could never let anyone pass before them, even if it is the most logical thing on earth. So we struggled to get our luggage out of the compartment, they shouted at us, they tried to push their luggage in, finally David tried to turn around with his backpack on his back and hit over one of the younger boys and the father almost started a fight. Great, I was only waiting for an excuse to jump on one of them, to let out all my frustration, my hatred, and to stranggle them. Of course, it didn't happen, we restrained ourselves, concealed our anger as usual and finally got off the train somehow. At 3am in the morning, Indian railway stations look even more desolate then during the day but we had no choice but to wait there for another three hours for the hotels to open. I don't remember much of this, I think I was having a bad fit of fever, but finally the sun rose, the woman responsible for the waiting room asked some money from us for nothing and we left in search for a hotel.

This proved to be another challenge even though we didn't expect it at first. There was a whole cluster of hotels just around the train station so we thought it would be easy to find a decent room. The first hotel, no room. Next hotel, no room. Next hotel, no room.... even though we saw lots of keys hanging from the boards. We didn't understand. In the end, one guy came up to us and told us in a rather disgusted voice: No foreigners! Well great! That was exactly what I needed after three nights without sleep and amongst terrible people - open racism against our white skin! You can imagine how we felt. Really welcome! At that point you would probably ask yourself what the heck you are doing there and why you ever set foot into this country or left home, but we had no energy left to think or feel anything but miserably. In the end, we paid a horrendous amount of money for a terrible room in a very expensive hotel - the only ones who would accept us - I did not care for the usual dirty bathroom or the unchanged bedsheets (they never change bedsheets between customers here in India), I just fell on the bed and slept.

Several hours later, we were making our way back to the train station, my health in a terrible state, my mind even worse, trying to ignore the hostile stares from the people around us and fearing what would await us at the train station... While David went to buy some water, I heard it again, a nice female voice announcing: "For your kind attention please: Train Number 3408 going from Delhi to NJP via Patna is now scheduled to arrive 1 1/2 hours late. We are sorry for any inconvenience." I could have started crying at that point had it been worthwhile but at least I thought I was definietly going to go crazy if I had to listen to this voice for another couple of hours.... I was rescued by a nice little restaurant in the train station where people accepted us, welcomed us even with a smile, where I could not hear the voice, where I could drink a hot cup of tea with some lemon, and where we finally learnt that our train was only 2 hours late!! Soon, we found ourselves in another 8-persons compartment with 6 Indian men and luggage for 10 so that we ended up sleeping - or trying to sleep - with our big backpacks on our berths. I guess we had about 40 cm of space and it took me a while to find a position in which I would not risk to fall off or lose one of my bodyparts due to lack of blood circulation... After about 4 hours of sleep, the nice Indian men decided that 5 am in the morning was a fabulous time to talk on their cellphones and around 6am they thought it was time for me to get up in order for them to be able to sit more comfortable (I had the middle berth which means that, as long as it is expanded, the people on the lower berth do not have heaps of room to sit at their heads though the middle berth). I decided to be just as ignorant as they are and stayed where I was. Later on, David had some fun with the guy opposite of us because he started starring at David, spread his legs appart, put his hands well.... I'll let you imagine the rest and how glad we were to get off that train in New Jalpaiguri, with only about three hours of jeep-ride left to get us to Darjeeling.

Well, this, basically, was our wonderful travelstory and you might think that we overreacted, that everything in the end was not that bad, that we are getting intolerant versus other cultures.... but you have to keep in mind that this is nothing exceptional and that our life here was more or less like that very single day! Let me assure you, we have searched our hearts and our behavior a couple of times, we have talked to other backpackers and travellers, and it always comes down to the same thing: India - a great and beautiful country, Indian people - the worst you can meet on earth. I truly have never met another people that is so deeply arrogant, selfish and egoistic and I don't only speak about the people here treating foreigners. They also treat each other in the same way - always only keen on their own advantage, never considering anybody else, ignoring the poor, the children, the handicaped, the weak, always pushing, always getting the best for themselves... I am not sure if it is due to the caste-society but I can assure you, it does not make for a very agreable society and it turns everyday life into a continious struggle of survival that takes up much too much engergy and leaves everybody in it without a smile on a the face, frustrated and aggressive. It has never happened to me before that I have really felt hatred but here, I felt it throgging through my veins, penetrating every part of my body, poisoning every thought, until the only thing I wanted to do was to hurt somebody here. You think you don't know me anymore when reading this? Well, I have to admit I don't recognize me neither but India has brought out very terrible aspects of my character I never thought existed. This is a sad and better lesson, nothing that I wanted to learn during our travels... I set out to discover the world and new cultures, to love the people, and for the first time in my life I find hatred...

Well, there are so many more things I could tell you, so many more examples to give, but I think this post has become long enough already and you get the general idea why, at frist I wrote to you about how much I love this country and why all this has changed so drastically over the last weeks. We will soon write some more about Darjeeling, this heavenly place on earth, about the wonderful time we spent there and we'll have more pictures for you to come... to make sure you don't get the impression we are hating everything about India....