After almost a week in Mumbai, I had done a bunch of things, failed at a couple of others, and seen a couple of friends. But time's a wastin' and the end of my visa in India draws closer. I now have almost no chance of doing all that I wanted to do originally. It's time to face that fact and strike the south of India of the list of places that I will visit. It's a bit of a shame, but I suppose it makes another reason to come back again.
I made a bit of a mistake of asking at my hotel the best way to get to Aurangabad, the place I want to visit next. At the front desk, they immediately suggested a bus and began to phone around for tickets. It came back that I could take an overnight bus for 1200 rupees. There were two problems with that. One was it was an overnight bus. I really don't want to take an overnight bus. I can't sleep on buses well and sleeper buses are quite uncomfortable for me. The other was the price. I don't know who they dealt with, but that's a price to get across the country, not a couple hundred kilometers away. So I nixed that one and wondered aloud about the train. They had one of the other people in the hotel “help” me with a train ticket. He showed me the train schedule and the train that I would want to take, an express direct to Aurangabad, and told me I would want an AC seat (AC being air conditioned train car). I wasn't at all sure that was what I wanted, but I didn't argue too much. Then he asked for 1000 rupees for a deposit. (Deposit here means something different than at home, I have come to understand. Where deposit at home means it is the first payment of the full price, here it usually means money from which the difference after full payment has been made will be refunded.) 1000 rupees? Yikes! That was going to mean a rather expensive ticket. I had come all the way across the country for less than 600 rupees. But that was in the sleeper class, which is not air conditioned. There were a couple of other perks that came with the AC classes, as I found out on the trip the next day. Since the ticket seemed like it was going to be much more expensive that I thought it maybe should be, I went to an internet cafe and checked the price online. It turned out that it would be 420 rupees anyway, and then there would naturally be a service charge, and I had heard that sometimes ticket prices can be inflated by a ticket agent, so I expected that it would end up being priced at more than 420.
And I did this instead of walking 5 minutes across the street to the train station to stand in line and get it done myself. For that I deserved to get ripped off, but I was dearly hoping that I wouldn't get too ripped off.
The next morning, I waited for my confirmation, as I had started on the waiting list for a seat. So I took a little walk to see a little bit more of historical Mumbai before heading off. And for that little while, I almost couldn't tell I was in India. Those colonial buildings really give a different atmosphere and feel to the city.
Then it was back to get my ticket and get out of town. The damage? Well, I think there may well have been a charge for the reservation system they used, something called Tatkal. There was also some unknown charge on the ticket for 20 rupees. So the ticket ended up being 560 rupees, a third higher than the India Rail price. And then they charged me 250 rupees for a service charge, which I thought was a bit outrageous, but I didn't insist on knowing what it would be when I let them set about the enterprise, so again I probably deserved to be outrageously ripped off. And in the end that all still came to about 16 dollars for the ticket, which would get me down to third intersection from the train station in Canada. So, I'll deal with it.
The train ride itself was reasonably comfortable. It was a day time trip, but because it was an AC chair car, I was unable to just stick my hand and camera out the window to take photos of the passing scenery. In addition, the train was oversold, as usual and there were people everywhere in the train car link areas, so there was really no opportunity to take any photos of the scenery, which was a shame because it had a lot of similarities to Arizona or New Mexico and those areas of the US. But one of those perks of being in an AC train car was that they didn't allow anyone who hadn't purchased an AC ticket into the car. So there were only the people who “belonged” in seats inside the car. That was kind of nice. So there was no jostling or pushing or bumping about, which was nice.
On arrival in Aurangabad, it was dark. I left the station and was immediately accosted by a guy who said he could help me find a good place to stay for cheap. I followed him just because he showed me a card for a cheap place and he told me he worked for the place. I don't know why I pretended to believe him, because he obviously was just snagging tourist types and taking them somewhere he would make a commission. But I let him drag me around to a couple of places that were not the cheap one he had told me about originally. I really should just walk away at that point, but then the second place he took me to had beds with good mattresses. This is something rare in India, I have discovered. So it was more than he said it would be, but the place had a good feel, so I stayed. And then I completely ignored him. I don't know if I should have been giving him a tip, but I wasn't about to. And I don't know if my room price is higher than it would be if I had found it myself, but since he brought me, a commission had to be built into the price. But I decided not to care about that too much.
Then the guy started telling me about how to get to the famous caves in the area. He was going to get me on a tourist bus to Ajanta the next day and I could go and see them. I really didn't want to go on a tourist bus and be at the mercy of their schedule. I wanted to go on my terms. So I just told him I would think about it.
Later I asked the man running the hotel and got the real scoop on how to go. He thought I should go on the local bus and I could leave anytime I wanted to after 6 in the morning, when the buses started. And he gave me the advice to go the next day as it was going to be Sunday, while the Ajanta Caves would be closed on Monday, so I couldn't go that day. The hotel man turned out to be a great resource for information, and I was gladder that I had chosen to stay in his hotel.
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