Inconvience cost is regretted

Ahh, I'm out of Delhi. Yesterday I went on another little tour since the train was scheduled to leave for Bikaner at 4:30pm. First I went to the National Museum (very unimpressive despite its reputation as the best museum in India), then to the tower to the left. The car broke down literally 20 meters (yeah, I'm going metric) from the entrance. By the time I was finished touring the place the driver fixed the problem.

Anyway, the tower and surrounding ruins were very cool. I'm always a sucker for ruins and these included the first mosque in India and some tombs and such. It's the oldest part of Delhi. So I finished there and started the drive to the railway station. It was apparently some holiday so traffic was a mess. It took an hour to go across town to the station. When I did get there it was the usual Indian craziness. People sleeping and eating and um... other stuff, where ever they please. They had signs all over saying not to spit on the platform, but umm... other stuff was apparently ok. Seems a little backward to me, but to each their own I guess.

I grabbed a quick meal on the street (35 cents!) and sat and waited for the train. At 4 they came on the speaker and said the train was 45 minutes late and the "Inconvenience cost is regretted". I thought that was an interesting way of putting it.

So finally the train 5609 pulls up. The thing filled up in about 5-10 seconds. I had a sleeper reserved so I walked from one end to the other looking for it. No luck. Only the no a/c ghetto trains. At this point I'm freaking out. Despite literally being the world's largest employer, there isn't a worker in sight to ask. I finally see, as the train is pulling away, the engineer. I straight up start running next to the train asking if it's the right one. He says no, but the train number is right! So now I'm thinking I've missed the train, the tour guy screwed me over, and oh yeah my sunglasses fell off somewhere. Bad times.

Well about 5 seconds later, a girl runs up to me with sunglasses in hand to return them to me. Feeling a little better. Then I see farther down the signs are still listing my train number. As I get closer I see that it's listing a separate train (but same number!) with the nice cars. So it's all good. 10 minutes later it arrives, I get on, find my seat in amazing air conditioning and I'm on my way. Feeling good.

So I survived the regrettable inconvenience and I'm now at my hotel in Bikaner. Nice place, real a/c, and free internet! The desert is entirely different, so I'm looking forward to it.