We don’t get out much.

We’re off to Hampi for a short break before the big rush sets-in at Mysore Bed and Breakfast.

  It’s just an ordinary trip, our second to Hampi in about a year. It is however, a bit of an adventure. The NEW escalator, at the station, the very first in Mysore, outside the shopping Malls, is actually working. Hooray!! Yes my life is so mundane, the working escalator is a highlight!

When it first opened people fell off it, not knowing how it worked so they appointed guardians to help people work it out. All seems to be hunky dory today. Manjula, for one is sooooo experienced at this.

We’re on platform three for the overnight sleeper train to Hospet. At the door of our coach a couple of young foreign women were reading the list of passengers posted on the outside and exclaiming in English in load squeaky voices that there are lots of men in the 50’s due to travel on the train. What about me I’m 59? It’s seems I was acceptable as they were concerned about travelling with Indian men. I have No comment!

 

 

Manjula made some supper. Wonderful!

The sleep and journey was pretty uneventful except Manjula says for the snoring, phone ringing and loud voices of the INDIAN men in their 50’s.

Then she breaks out laughing at the people having a poo beside the rail track. Well coffee has arrived so all is good with the world.

My beef is that nobody seems to have a volume control. Says the quiet, reserved Yorkshireman!

So it’s now 6.30 am and we’ve just stopped at the station which we think is the one before ours.

CRASH BANG… what the hell! The curtain and its rail for ours and the next section falls to the floor. A man burst in between Manjula and I to reach through to yank the emergency cord. He definitely looked as if he might have been in his 50’s

 

 

Well guess what? He’d only missed his stop, no real emergency and you know that in India, things sort of work out, in the end, well the emergency stop cord didn’t stop the train, so we weren’t stuck explaining why our emergency stop cord had been pulled! Then again, don’t rely on it in an emergency folks.

 

 

but rest assured there is a socket to recharge smart phones, laptops etc. Priorities are sorted.

 

I’m getting a bit slow with the camera, so you’ll have to imagine…the next one.

We’ve just passed a simple old station, stencil painted on the buildings that are no longer used, instead of the usual word: ABANDONED it said ABUNDANT. Classic!

Hampi madness here we come!