Delhi to Shimla, with a pit stop in Kalka.
We made it to our train safely with no delays and off we were to Kalka. I slept for a few minutes and read mostly (I am reading Sarah’s Key, recommended by my step mom Susan who read it from a recommendation from my sister Amber and I am now recommending it to all of you).
We made it to Kalka with relative ease and found out toy train to Shimla. Well, riding the toy train has been one of Marlee’s longest dreams and as she said “it was the greatest disappointment of her life.” She pictured it as a real toy train that you played with as a kid and while the seats and inside resembled that, it was really just a very small train.
What made it EVEN better was the couple who sat across from us. It had seats where the benches are facing each other so two people on one side, two on the other, and all facing each other.
Marlee and I had put our big backpacks in the stack at the back and just had our small ones with us and this man and wife and baby who was terrifying came in, the man dropped about 5 bags in the less than 2 foot space between us and the wife and baby sat down.
So, naturally, Marlee and I are cracking up trying to decide if they are serious. We literally couldn’t sit in our seats and put our feet on the ground. We looked at the wife who just stared at us, emptily, while her baby stared at me like a parakeet that doesn’t blink. The kid was FREAKING ME OUT. We tried to ask the husband, who was socializing outside, if he was sitting there but he didn’t understand.
I sat down to try and make her realize I 1) would have to put my feet and legs all over their shit and 2) I couldn’t sit down normally. She still stared at us, empty. At this point Marlee and I are DYING laughing. Absolutely dying. Then, her husband got on the train and he too, just stared at us. Finally, someone else asked him to put the bags under the seat and what not and he did but they still left a bag between his wife and myself so I sat with perfect posture for about 5 hours.
If there was ever a time in my life that I wish we had a video camera recording, it was then.
