When I give T a hard time about tyrannical England and the way they treated all of their colonies, his usual response is to cry out, “Hey! We gave them trains!!” Nowhere is this more true than in India.

We took our first Indian train to Amritsar, riding the Shatabdi Express. Sarah and Mick had told us that the Shatabdi was the best train they took, so I was excited. Nerdy as it is, I love trains (probably because I never took them as a kid). We got on board and were immediately greeted by a Sikh couple sitting across the aisle, who have lived in England for 43 years. They were charming and lovely and very friendly and my dizziness dissipated very quickly. Good start.

Almost immediately, the food started coming. We had been on the train about 10 minutes when T whispered, “Time for food,” to my great surprise. It was only about 5pm, but maybe Indians ate early? We were given some mango juice and a meal of a samosa, half a cole slaw sandwich and some biscuits. I was impressed—it was a highly ediible and filling dinner, or so I thought. Then, a few hours later another meal came. Still pretty full from the first dinner, we were kind of shocked, but we never turn down food, as a general rule.

The second course was soup, and the third was a veg curry (which explained why we were asked veg or non-veg when we booked the ticket), a chapati, and individual giant pots of tea. This meal was so good, I couldn’t even finish it. And I thought we were done. HA! A little while later came the ice cream. By the time we finished off the ice cream, I thought I was going to explode, and I had been eating train food. In my experience eating train food everywhere else, you’re lucky if you don’t die of salmonella or starvation because the food is so bad.

The views out the window were pretty good too. Most of what we saw on the tracks outside of Delhi were just slums: shantytowns made of shacks built on top of shacks, many with rooves made of plastic sheeting held on by bricks. I was surprised to see, however, that the people in the slums all looked happy. There were people doing their shopping, yakking away to their neighbors, and women doing their washing, and kids everywhere playing cricket. Once we got past the slums, we passed green field after green field, until T leaned over and said, “I feel like I’m in England.”

The way we figure it, we paid $15 for the train tickets for a 5-hour journey in which we got four courses. This means we basically got either free food or a free ticket. In T’s words, “This beats the hell out of British Rail.” Amen to that, brother.