Why People Complain About Travel In India

We are finally in Mumbai now (arrived last night) but it was a long time coming. We were trying to get our damn tickets for the 31/5 for three days leading up to it... it's a long and painful story.

After Tim spent hours trying to register onto the official train site and then trying to buy tickets (it's completely useless, and so is the help desk) we discovered that you can only book from that site if you are a resident of India. The good thing - we could see that there was availability on a sleeper train from Thivim station (our closest station) to Mumbai on the 31st of May. The problem is that the travel agent in Vagator cannot book tourist quota tickets for the train, just regular tickets that the locals can buy.

The next day, we hired a motorbike and went to Thivim station under threatening skies, but after lining up for an hour, we discovered that we couldn't buy the tickets there. Apparently you can only buy them from the departure station (Margao, about 35ks south as the crow flies), not the boarding station - bastards.

So we drove in the pouring rain straight to Calangute to try and find another booking agency that may be able to obtain tourist quota tickets so that we wouldn't have to ride all the way down to Margao in the rain. We're soaked to the bone by this point. The guy from Moon Tours said he could, but it was too late that day, we had to come back the next morning before 10am - fine.

The next morning, it was of course still bucketing down and we were running late, so we called the manager of the store on his mobile at 9.45am to ask if the 'boy' had left for the station yet, and he said "No, he hasn't but you have to hurry, he has lots of tickets to buy and I don't know how long I can delay him for."
Tim put in a super human effort, and we arrived there at 10.05am... I jumped off the back of the bike and raced inside only to find the store closed (security gate rolled down and everything). Fortunately, we recognised an employee that was waiting out the front of the shop from the day before, and she told us that the 'boy' had already left for the station... at 9.30am!! Lying bastards!!
Tim called the manager on his mobile and told him what a useless a-hole he was for 5 minutes, which made us both feel slightly better, but now time was running out because the tickets we wanted were for the following night and we were really starting to panic.

We then spent the next 3 hours in Calangute, going from travel agent to travel agent (in the rain) trying to see if they could buy tourist quota tickets. [NB: you cannot do this by the way... anyone who says they can is lying.] There was also a power cut due to said rain, so even the places that said they could do it (which they couldn't), needed a photocopy of our passport (which of course you need electricity for) or alternatively, wanted to charge us a huge fee each. All in all, a horrible pain in the arse.

Eventually, we caught a local bus into Panajim and then another local bus into Margao and then a rickshaw into the train station... and got our tickets in five minutes! Woo hoo!
It doesn't end there unfortunately.

So Wednesday night rolls around, we catch a bus into Mapusa and then another one to Thivim station... we're about half an hour early for our blessed train... just in case. We're waiting on the platform and we kept hearing all these announcements on the loud-speaker in Hindi but didn't think too much of it. Eventually, we asked an India girl whether there was any news about our train, and she helpfully told us that it was running late. OK, no worries, so we went and sat back down for about another 3/4 of an hour. I thought I better go ask the train master when it would actually be arriving... good thing I did, because the bloody train was running 12 HOURS late!! He told us to come back the next day at 6am.
F*%k.

So we're stuck at Thivim station (which is not exactly the tourist hub of Goa)... it's dark, and the only close accommodation was charging 400 rs per night (bastards)!! We decided to catch a bus into Mapusa and stay there instead, so we hopped on an absolutely packed bus and had to put our bags in the front cage section where the driver and a couple of old guys were sitting... no problem as we did that on the way in. However, when we got off at Mapusa, we found that someone had kindly rifled through Tim's daypack (which had our ipod and both passports in there as well as a couple of hundred Aussie dollars), but thankfully nothing was taken.
We didn't know that at the time, and both screamed at the bus driver and I took his license plate number and said I'd be making a formal complaint... this made us feel a bit better. ;)

We found a hotel (309 rs), had a nice meal with a couple of surprisingly cold beers and tumbled into bed at about 10pm knowing that we have to get up at 4.45am to get the taxi that we've booked for 5am the next morning (150 rs). I know, I know. It would have worked out cheaper to stay 20 metres away from the train station and pay the higher room rate.
There's more...

We get to Thivim station half an hour before the train arrives, and we're told that it will actually be getting here at 7am (bastards!!) - the confusion was that it will leave Margao station at 6am, not arrive at Thivim at that time.
So finally, we get on the train (at 7.30am) and have a bit of a kip for a couple of hours etc etc. We even ate some train food which hasn't even made us sick... yet!. But instead of our train taking 12 hours it took us 18 hours to get to Mumbai. Bastards!!

One really good thing was that we met this great guy called Hasan who gets to travel the world for work (he's a photographic artist and Assistant Professor at a New York university... he works on various projects all over the world and is even going to show some work at the Tate Modern in October! Respect!), so he's very interesting to talk to.

Thank god we're out of Vagator!! We were horribly bored.

I can see why so many people complain about travel in India.