Train Ride

We went to Goa for a conference and were challenged to try taking the train instead of flying. Goa is on the other side of the country from Chennai and is known as a tropical getaway. We decided to go for it, but waited to buy train tickets until about 2 weeks before, which we found out was way too late. One travel agent even refused to work with us! In the end, we had to resort to flying to Goa (2.5 hours in a plane) and taking the train back (about 24 hours).

Here is a video of us getting ready to board our first train and some shots of what it was like.

All in all, we had a good experience with it. 24 hours on a train is much more comfortable than 24 hours on a plane. We did a lot of reading, walking around, Sudoku, journaling, listening to podcasts - anything that would take up a nice block of time. Food was pretty easy to get as there would be someone walking through about every 5 minutes saying "Chai, Chai", or whatever else they had to sell. People on a train are very friendly too. there was a lot of laughing going on around us and I even saw a group of people playing some form of charades.

There were a lot of good memories, and we might try it again sometime, but after a full day of traveling, we were both ready to crash at home.