Ooty-not so snooty

After being based for nearly 3 weeks in Cochin, Kerala, a town that I grew to love in my time there, it was time to move on. My last visit to the excellant Dr. Prasanth and his wife and team for my last crown and plate was over and he presented me with a model `snake boat` that are raced during a festival in Alleppy, very sweet of them. My next objective was the narrow-guage steam train to Ooty, a hill station used by the British Raj during the insufferably hot summer season. It is nestled high in the Nilgiri hills, famous for its tea, cofee and wild life. To get to the steam train railhead involves a 4 hour train ride from Cochin-Coimbatore, arriving at 9 pm, then catching the train to Mettupalayam at 5 am the following morning. The ride to Coimbatore was uneventful (for India that is). Several encounters including a young man running an orphanage in S. Kerala, going to meet an American in Delhi coming to work as a volonteer. The train I`m on goes from Trivandrum in the south to Delhi in the North, 50 hours stuck in a sweaty, dirty uncomfortable, (I`m in 2nd or `cattle` class) carriage eating food from vendors on the train or at stations and living in very intimate proximity with fellow inmates, not something I would consider doing except in the most dire of circumstances. I was glad when we arrived and headed for the ticket office to get my ticket for the next day. There were no less than 400 people queuing for tickets at the 24hr ticket office in very little order at the 6 windows, everbody trying to protect their place by moving as close as possible to the person in front, while desperate/audacious enemies tried to push in where they could. This , for the first time that I have seen in India, occasioned shouts of anger from the orderly line and at one point some one went to fetch the police. Order was established for a total of 5 minutes and chaos resumed its natural place in a country as overpopulated as this where 12 million passengers travel EVERY DAY! (think what it will be like around 2040 when the population should exceed that of China),

better visit soon if you want to. 45 Minutes later, ticket in hand and shoulders screaming from my back-pack, I barge out of the station somewhat looking forward to the inevitable

confrontation with the ubiquitous touts amassed outside. I find a hotel spitting distance from the station and, ignoring the unchanged pillow case/sheet and stinking squatter tiolet, lay out my silk sleeping sheet, put a t-shirt on the pillow, set my alarm for 4.30am and am soon in the land of nod...........(to be continued)