After checking out of my Mumbai hotel at 1pm, I started on my way to Bandra station in the northern burbs of Mumbai, and from there I would catch the 9pm train to Ajmer. It only took an hour to get to Bandra, which meant I had 7 hours to kill in waiting room - 35 degrees and 700% humidity meant that exploring with my backpack on wasn't an option.
It's been so humid that even just blinking makes me sweat.
The train arrived and left on time. I was travelling in a 'sleeper' car, but at the start of journey all the beds are still in seat-mode. So I sat with an Indian family and read my book while they passed around the various courses of their pre-packed dinner, never once forgetting to offer each plate to me too.
The sincere generosity of people here has totally blown me away, but I'll write more on that topic another day...
After dinner we all slept. I swapped beds with some woman so that she didn't have to climb the skinny 10' ladder to the top berth. The hypnotic rocking of the train sent me straight into a deep sleep. I didn't open my eyes again until well into Tuesday.
Since I'd moved beds, I'd also moved away from my newly adopted Indian family. So instead I woke up in the middle of a group of young Sunnis on their way to Ajmer where they were working as site volunteers at a Muslim festival. Most of them were students, and all spoke better English than I do. They grilled me endlessly about Australia, my education, family, cricket, and even my salary. I told them what I earnt each year - they gasped - hours later I realised that they mistakenly thought that's what I was paid each month. So for almost quarter of the 19-hour journey they sat there looking at me and thinking "this guy earns close to a million bucks a year, but he's still too tight to fork out $4 for an airconditioned carriage".
They still gave me food and bought me tea even when they thought I was a millionaire.
The train ride was long, but entertaining and generally awesome. Open doors mean you can hang right outside the carriage and stick your face into the hot, semi-desert wind while the massive diesel cruises at nearly 100km/h. And constantly - and I mean constantly - a stream of service staff patrol the halls so you're never more than 4 seconds away from food, drinks, sweets, or a hot chai tea.
After a long wait in the station, and even longer train ride, plus a short trip on an auto-rickshaw followed by a bus ride through the mountains, I finally arrived at Lake Pushkar, 30 hours after I left my Mumbai hotel.
I then had the best shower of my life.
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