Up about 8:00. No hot water. Didn't have a shower. Packed my stuff and went upstairs for breakfast. About 9:00, walked to the internet and he told me it was working at the moment, but to wait. There was a girl from Washington state waiting as well, so we waited and talked for a very long time. Two hours we talked, and every once in a while the internet dude would remark that the line was still busy. Finally, we headed off to another internet. I had dozens of new e-mails, including two from my mom "Where are you?" "Are you ok?". Also found out my great aunt Dot passed away. Jen only had two. She was quite disappointed!
I updated my journal, then we went our separate ways.
I headed back to the hotel, cooled off in the room a bit, then about 2:00, took a tuk-tuk to the train station to see if I made it on the train. I too my whole backpack, because one way or another, I was getting on that train.
The line-up for the counter was long again. I knew it was going to a long wait until I got to the counter. When I walked in, an Israeli girl was sitting down, waiting, and she kept checking me out. AFter a few minutes, she got up and proceeded to bypass the queue to the ticket counter, with the encouragement of a local or two. She kept looking at me. We started chatting, and she remarked that because she's a woman, she gets special treatment at the train stations. She (Simona, I think was her name) didn't know that until recently, when some of the locals started talking to her, asking her why she was waiting in line. They told her to just go to the front of the line. I half joked (but half serious!) that I should have her check my ticket to see if I made the train or not. She said that wouldn't be a problem, she would do that for me, but me being the polite type, declined, saying I would just wait in line. All of a sudden, she grabbed my ticket from me, said she'll check it for me, and to go and sit down. So, I went and sat down. There was another backpacker behind me...I'll bet he was wishing he started chatting her up first! Haha! A few minutes later, she returned with her own ticket (she was booking out of here for tomorrow) and good news for me. I was on the train! YES!!!! I thanked her muchly for doing that for me, she insisted it was no problem. Haha, I'll bet all the other backpackers were pissed off at me at that moment! They all had to wait in line!
I also found out that the train was late today, it would be arriving in Jaisalmer about 5:00 and not leaving until about 6:30 (usually it leaves about 4:15). With a bunch of extra time to kill, we decided to head to town to get something to eat.
She told me it's a very intersting experience to be a single women travelling alone in India. Both pro's and con's. Local men stare a lot. Just stare at her. Local men believe that foreign women are "easy"...the complete opposite of Indian women. The local men are always wanting to talk to foreign women and touch them, even their hands or arms, they don't get that opportunity with Indian women. So, it's hard, because they get all that extra attention that they don't necessarily want. But, they get special treatment, like not having to wait in lines. Many train stations have separate queues for women...Jaisalmer, being quite small, only had one queue for everyone, so because she was a woman, she found out that she gets special priveleges. Simona is a very nice girl. (Note: Guys, if you plan on coming to India, travel with a woman!!!)
Simona was trying to book a ticket to Jaipur, but the section from Jodhpur to Jaipur was full...so she only got a ticket to Jodhpur, which arrives in Jodhpur at night, which she wasn't happy about. She decided that she should go back to the train station and get on the waiting list for the Jodhpur to Jaipur part, by the time tomorrow rolls around, she'll probably be ok.
So, we headed back to the train station, and I sat down and waited, and she pushed her way to the front of the queue and got herself on the waiting list for the second part of the journey. Note that none of the men in the queue complain or groan or anything about her doing this...to them it's perfectly acceptable that she should get preferential treatment.
We went out separate ways, and I waited for the train.
As I was waiting, the tuk-tuk driver that took us to town for lunch and brought us back came back and told me that she didn't pay the fare, and tried to get me to pay. I pretty much told him to screw off, and he did. He was just trying to get extra money out of me.
The train showed up shortly after 5:00, everyone piled on, and the train left about 6:45.
The train was a new experience! I was in a sleeper car. There are 72 "beds" in a sleeper car. Each compartment has 8 beds, 6 situated on one side of the aisle, two on the other side. They are like bunk beds. Three high on the one side (where the are 6 beds) and two high for the remaining two. I was on the top bed. During the day, everyone just sits on the bottom bed, when night falls, people start climbing up into their bunks and/or laying down on their beds. Everything is steel. Including the beds. Except maybe a few millimetres of padding covered my a plastic that make up the "bed". And two really grungy toilets, one at each end of the car. The windows have bars. It was like a prison on wheels.
I climbed up to bed about 9:00, I guess, and fell asleep.
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