The Beginning of Our Little Trip to Kill TIme by Mia



We have been doing our sightseeing way too fast so now we have 3 extra days to kill! There was some debate over what we should do. Daddy wanted to go to the Himalayas and ski, but we decided that 40 hours of travel by night train and bus through high mountains was not worth just one day of skiing. Besides, we don’t really have the gear for it. Daddy is really set on taking the train somewhere so he came up with a compromise that did not involve ten hours on a rickety bus on a one lane road winding along a steep cliff in the Himalayas. It does involve a night train, though. We are going to a town in the foothills of the Himalayas that used to be the ‘Summer Capitol’ so all the important people went there during the summer when it was way too hot everywhere else. There are lots of cool old buildings leftover so that is what we are going to see. It’s not quite as fun as skiing, but it will do!



All plugged in waiting for the trian.



This whole little side trip was really spontaneous, like we just decided we needed to go somewhere else a few days ago and the idea to go here was developed last night at dinner. I don’t even know the name of the place we are going to! Our driver and travel agent guy didn’t really like the sudden change of plans, especially because we wouldn’t need him to drive us around for the next few days. There was a lot of… uhh… heated… conversation about the bill and stuff on the ride over. He gets to drive for the last few days, so I guess that’s ok.



We saw a giant cannon at a fort in Jaipur before lunch at our favorite restaurant. We started going there yesterday and the people there are really nice (which probably has a lot to do with the fact that we go there a lot) and the food is really good! After lunch we drove all the way back to Delhi which took a long time! After we got to the train station we drove around for like twenty minutes looking for dinner.
 

We got fast Indian food for dinner which was, well, fast food, so it was not really delicious at all and really spicy. Mommy called it ‘authentic’ because it isn’t stuff that tourists normally eat (well, there is a reason for that, isn’t there?) and in the tourist restaurants they make it less spicy. There was even a world map on the wall with dots on the cities that they had a branch in. They had a few in the Americas and Asia, but mostly in Europe. It actually looked pretty big even though I have never heard of it in my life. The Delhi branch was three stories high and pretty big and lit up so mommy thought it was a supermarket at first. We were so desperate to eat before we had to hit the train station that we got fast food!



In one of our little compartments on the train. There are two bunk
beds on either side and a tiny isle in the middle. Zander and I slept
In another compartment with two old ladies.



After dinner, we went to the train station. The train station is really gross and dirty, but most of this country is. There is a really complicated train class system with all sorts of chair classes, sleeper classes, and AC classes. I don’t think any of them are particularly luxurious though. We are in either AC 2 or AC 3. Daddy ordered AC 2 tickets but it says AC 3 on the actual tickets so we are not sure. Our train got delayed three hours so instead of leaving at 9:15 pm it’s going to be leaving at around 11:30 pm. We waited it out in the waiting room (they even have a room for this!), sat on our bags and plugged in our electronics. The train ride is about eight hours long so we are going to get there at like 8 am instead of 5 am. I’m kind of glad about that because I do late nights way better than early mornings!