A tired sun casts a warming line through a dusty window, spilling drunk shadows across the pale walls and dark faces that lurk within the 3:05 to Jaipur.
The smell of warm feet and used sheets melts into the cracked leather seats, while the gravelly snores of the round-bellied rhino above lingers stubbornly.
Amazingly, the scraping rasping gasps he drags up and out through his nose aren’t even dulled by the Amazonian moustache that took up residency on his upper lip some years previous, and has since refused to move.
Now, it – like me – is a mere spectator in this cacophonous din that has lasted well over 3 hours...so far.
The curtains – ragged and frayed – do little to shield the sleeping eyes of the mother-cum-daughter on the bunk below.
It’s 5:30.2 hours later, the cabin is smothered in a blanket dark. Heavy and damp.
From somewhere in the unseen future, a horn cuts it way towards us, panicked and persistent, the roaring intrusion scythes and slices the near silence of communal sleep, until it’s there. Or rather here – buffeting past the rusted window frame for a fistful of moments and then it’s gone.
No sign. No sound. A ghost train only real in our minds and memories.
Nearly there.
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