Words by Matt Hayes & Photographs by Ceri Davies
An extract from the India Magazine
Amongst travellers there’s one declaration that goes practically undisputed: India brings out the best in trains, and trains bring out the best in India - a statement that becomes clearer with the steady accumulation of miles.
When I recall my own year of train travel across India, it’s the succession of landscapes and people that passed me by as I sat in the doorway of the Kalka Mail that remains most vivid. Delhi’s Red Fort glimpsed by moonlight, the fields and forests of Uttar Pradesh at dawn, the gilt suburbs of Allahabad at sunset - from a train’s open doorway these already beautiful sights took on a more indelible quality than usual. Though some of the details inevitably slip from your grasp as the years pass, others retain their clarity - a flock of impatient swallows, a farmer leading his goats along a country road, a young woman glancing up from the maize harvest. How wonderful and dreamlike everything seems from a lumbering Indian railway carriage!
Another oft-mentioned charm of train travel is the fascinating social microcosm that develops over long journeys, when stories flow and barriers break. Newlyweds on their way to honeymoon in Srinagar might offer you some of their aloo matar and tinfoil-wrapped chapati. An elderly man en route to Manipur may tell you, while shaving, about his beloved grandson who’s currently serving as a soldier on the Chinese border. A young boy on his way to school in Darjeeling could ask you in fluent French, then English, whether you’d like him to turn the lights out. And when you wake up the next morning, he’ll perhaps explain why Rabindranath Tagore is the greatest poet India has ever produced.
All the while, chaiwallahs lug their huge pots up and down the aisle, handing out cups of sweet masala chai for a few rupees each. Samosas, tamarind-soaked chaat, puffy puri and refreshing mango kulfi (especially welcome on sweltering afternoons) are offered by a practically ceaseless stream of vendors who call out their wares and pass local delicacies through windows whenever the train begins to slow.
It was on my half-day journey traversing the northern state of Himachal Pradesh that I came to truly appreciate the magic of Indian rains. Between Pathankot and Palampur, a narrow-gauge railway feels its way, snake-like, through the Kangra Valley. The railway tends to follow the west-to-east line of the Dhauladhar range - unlike the main-gauge tracks that confidently criss-cross the Indian plains like Roman roads, the Kangra Valley Railway timidly bends in submission to the lie of the land. The elderly ‘toy trains’ that travel this route feel as though they have been brought out of retirement to tackle an impossible landscape with wisdom rather than strength. Decrepit engines slowly drag their hulking weight up long inclines and then apply the full force and screech of their brakes as they descend down the other side, twisting and flexing their aged spines, only to repeat their Sisyphean task all over again when they reach the bottom. To make their struggle slightly easier, the most daunting cliff-faces are tunnelled and the many rushing mountain torrents are creakily bridged; these uneven slopes, entangled with forest and savaged by rocky outcrops, must have been formidable opponents for engineers.
So often, a journey by train would ease my mind, lift my spirits and, by demonstrating how large and varied the world is, reveal the breadth of future possibility. This was true of the Kangra Valley Railway, one of the most beautiful of all these journeys. Craggy peaks tipped with glistening snow soared above us on the northern horizon. Scatterings of blue-green Himalayan pine, spindly deodar cedars, spire-shocks of Himalayan fir and shaggy Morinda spruce - a barely evolved Jurassic landscape - were softened by the occasional presence of a gentle oak. Together, conifers and angiosperms shrouded the valley floor and veiled the mountains themselves so that only in the thin stretch between tree line and jagged snow line did these peaks reveal their naked, wind-hewn rock.
Further down the slopes, villages were announced by sunlight flashing on windowpanes and smoke-plumes borne aloft by the wind. Clusters of houses could be glimpsed amid rain-freshened pastures and tea plantations. Closer to the tracks, yellow mustard flowers bloomed in anticipation of spring.
Our train began to chug its way, at quarter-speed, over a bridge that spanned an enormous grey riverbed. After half a minute, we came to the actual flowing water - much narrower than the rift it had carved through the land but wild nonetheless. A group of people, brilliantly lit by the afternoon sun, milled about at the water’s edge. Women and girls, clad in pink saris and blue kameez, beat their laundry against boulders, while shirtless boys jumped from rock to rock and two men stood in relaxed conversation, one of them pointing dramatically up the river towards the mountains.
Suddenly, I spotted a group of monkeys bounding across the rocks in the direction of the clothes-washers and craned my neck to follow their progress. Were these monkeys hoping to slake their thirst with icy river water, or were they headed for the carefully bundled food by the river’s edge? The train didn’t linger long enough for me to find out but the memory of this crossing lodged itself firmly in my mind.
I was to discover later that the river is a tributary of the Beas (or Hyphasis as it was known to the Greeks) which flows southwest into the Punjab Plain and marks the easternmost edge of Alexander’s conquests. It was water from this river, flowing from the same mountains two and a half thousand years earlier, that filled the hearts of Alexander’s men with despair and made them yearn for their homeland after eight long years of campaigning.
My delight at the epic river crossing was soon disturbed by a group of young boys lurking in the bushes beside the tracks who ran forward eagerly and flung bright gulal powder through the train’s windows. There was a flash of smiles, a burst of laughter, and then the moment had passed. Red, green, blue and purple powder clung to the window panels and the cracked leather seats. I glanced at the stern, saffron-robed sadhu who had been sitting opposite me throughout the journey. He had fared badly in the attack and yet I saw that even he was now smiling through his powder-sprinkled black beard. Just two days remained until March and the festival of Holi was already upon us.
It’s difficult to fully express the joy I felt during those few hours, simply looking out of an open window. There will perhaps come a day when India’s trains are modern, fast and completely sealed against the outside world. Although I would be the last person to wish for stagnation in the name of romance, I’ll nevertheless be a little sad when it’s no longer possible to hang out of the doorway of a train at dusk and not only watch but feel the countryside of India roll by.
