We got up early to get our $3 train ($3 total, not each) to Pathankot and were promptly surrounded by no less than 20 Indian teenage boys who encircled us and stared, for no good reason, for an hour. A train arrived and we got on, thinking it was ours, until one of the teens told us it was going to Delhi. Good thing, too, since it was skanky as hell. Finally, our train arrived and left, an hour late, and it was equally if not more skanky than the first one.

We sat on a wooden bench for 3 hours, and halfway through a family got on and we made friends with their two little boys. The two little boys wanted to sit next to the window, so one sat next to the man across from us, and one sat across from T. After a while, the mother told the eldest boy to give us some cookies, so he graabbed the package and thrust it onto T’s knee, laughing his little head off the whole time. In return we tried to give them some Maine postcards, which the little one happily clutched and the older one kept trying to give back.

Then another family, with 4 kids, got on and started begging. I’ll tell you what–India gives poverty a whole new name. They had a beautiful baby girl naked from the waist down, and a little boy and two other girls. One of the girls was carrying empty plastic bottles, and the oldest girl and the boy were, of course, begging. Obviously, they saw us and promptly stood there calling me Didi (which I think means auntie) and poking me in the leg until T gave them 6 rupees (about 20 cents).

Normally, we try not to give money to kids because they are just being pimped out by their parents instead of going to school, but after a while, it became apparent that we had to give them something or they would never leave. When we got off the train, our little boy friends said goodbye, calling out Goodbye Didi, and the beggar children’s mother started following me, pulling on my shirt and also calling me Didi until T gave her another 10 rupees.

Then we got in a rickshaw to the bus station, where we had hoped to get a tourist bus to Dharamsala, but when we arrived, the national bus was departing and the porter was screaming NOW! NOW! Thus, we were ushered onto the departing which was filthy, with about four inches of grime on the floor, along with peanut shells and orange peels and God knows what else. The driver stuck my bag under the back seat and T spent the next 3 hours holding onto his. We got a 3-person seat to ourselves for about 2 1/2 hours, until the driver made T put the bag in his lap so other people could fit on.

The drive was completely manic and sometimes terrifying, and we spent a great deal of time passing people on turns and careening around cliffside roads on two wheels. It seemed as if we stopped every 30 feet for a dropoff or a pickup, and the porter would blow a whistle, and the bus would slow down so people could hurtle themselves on or off, like a very low-rent version of a London bus.

We got to Dharamsala and then were put onto another local bus which was just as bad as the prior one, except T and I were in the back seat this time and T had to sit with his feet on top of the bags for about half an hour because the bus was jam-packed with schoolgirls and Buddhist monks. The journey from Pathankot is about 80km, and it only took about 4 hours. It seems Indian public transport is even more efficient than Cambodia’s. Oh joy.