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Monday, May 09, 2011

Trip to NE Post 1 Train Ride


The journey, though hot and tiring, was peppered with lots of fun and jokes.

This is the post you've all been waiting for! about the awesome adventure trip to NE!, well, technically, just Nagaland, with a longish stop-over at Guwahati. Nonetheless, the trip was awesome, not just as an adventure trip, but a learning experience in culture, language and err... travel-planning.

The train journey was 'AWESOME' Barney Stinson style. We had earlier booked Sleeper-Class tickets via apparently the 'only' train from Bangalore to Dimapur. It stopped at 70 odd stations! 3 days n 2 nights! But thankfully we had amazing co-passengers.
I remember, in the movie Spy Game, Robert-Redford tells Brad Pitt that cigarettes are the best ice-breaker. I was thrilled to know that the best ice-breaker in any sleeper-class compartment is a full deck of cards. I realized that almost 99% males in our lovely country knows how to handle a deck of cards. We spend 4 to 6 hot hours playing Bluff, Rummy and Donkey. We got to know the co-passengers, a bunch of Assamese laborers in Bangalore. Fun, honest and soft-spoken to the point of being coy. My friend and I, two average South Indians, with a loud sense of humor seemed like aggressive North Indians next to them.
 Another bunch of co-passengers, some Thangkul Bible College students also provided us directions to get around NE, and good suggestions about where to go and what to eat.