All That Can Happen On A Train Ride
The good, the bad and the ugly
Living around 50km away from the city where I work, taking a train to go to work has become an integral part of my life now.
Every day that I have to be at my workplace, I take a 45–50 minute train ride to reach the city. I love these rides. I get to do so much during this time — read, catch up on some pending work, catch up with friends, meet new people, or just catch up on some sleep.
I wonder how much of this I could do if I were to drive to work. Not much, I guess. But that’s another story.
Before getting on a train, it is very difficult to judge how’s the ride is going to be. It can be a calm ride where I end up just reading my book and having a quiet time to myself. It can be interesting and fun where I end up getting to know a fellow passenger and their story. And in some cases it can be highly frustrating where a simple hour long ride gets stretched unexpectedly due to delays and cancellations.
So, here’s me letting you in on a few of my traveling experiences — the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good
The most amazing part of riding on trains is that all I have to do is reach the train station on time and find myself a seat on the train. Once these are sorted, more often than not, I get a whole 45-minute window to myself. I can just settle down and enjoy the ride.
Reading a book while traveling on train is my favorite pass time. I love reading and being on train gives me a good chunk of time with my books before I start working for the day. The same applies while I am traveling back from work. Another quarter of an hour spent unwinding with a book on the ride back home.
Reading is not the only thing that I do while on train. I look out of the window every once in a while to appreciate the scene passing by.
Sometimes I get to observe the nature, and at other times, I get to look at how people have nurtured their gardens. This is super fun especially during the festive seasons when people decorate their porches and gardens. I distinctly remember this one porch which was decorated wonderfully with scarecrows and pumpkins during the Halloween season.
I admit that ogling at people’s porches and gardens might sound a bit a creepy. But you can hardly blame me for doing so, especially when I get the opportunity to admire and get inspired by the decorations of a wide variety of neighborhoods (other than just my own). Looking at people’s decorations always leaves me with a sense of awe for the creativity of the human mind.
Of course, I am not the only one traveling on train. There are other travelers just like me. So, there have been times when I have struck some interesting conversations with other traveler(s) on the train.
Once I met a person who mistook me for a Persian and after I denied any connections to Persia in my entire lineage, we ended up talking about the different cultures around the world. It was a very enlightening exchange.
He had traveled a lot around the globe, and after my chat with him, I realized that traveling in itself can be a very humbling experience. He knew that his small actions had significance, even when he considered himself quite insignificant in the larger scheme of things. I don’t remember his name now, but I will never forget how a humble man taught me so much about the world in just a small conversation.
The Bad
Not everything is cozy and rosy about traveling in trains. When there are surprises, there are shocks as well. Finding yourself in almost empty train can be a sigh of relief and a guarantee that the journey (for some parts, at the very least) would be peaceful. However, that is not always the case.
There have been occasions when the train was so packed that I could not find a single seat and I had to stand for the entire duration of the ride. This is especially bad when it happens before the start of my work day. By the time I reach my workplace, I am already tired. But is it any good when it happens while I am returning home after work? I don’t think so.
Another incident that pops up in my head is when, while on my journey home from work, I had to sit next to an enthusiastic group of adolescents who were returning from a get-together. No hate to them. They were genuinely excited about the day they had spent and were enjoying their ride home.
I, on the other hand, had a splitting headache, and wanted to just shut my eyes in some peace. Shut my eyes, I could. But I knew that peace was a long time coming. This got me really agitated and put me in really foul mood.
Uncertainty about the crowd that you are going to get to travel with is a double-edged sword. It might bring surprises in the form of amazing conversations and learnings, but it has also created situations where I have ended up being irked and annoyed.
Delays are another aspect that is synonymous with train travel. Countless number of times my trains have been delayed due to one reason or another. I have been delayed on my way to work and have reached late for meetings. I have also been delayed on my way back to home and have reached home later than expected. The stress associated with being delayed, especially due to no fault of mine, tires my mind.
So, when I reach my destination (be it my home or office), I am already spent. It usually takes a while before I can gather my bearings, calm down and tackle the remainder of what’s to come.
The Ugly
You can now ask me what can be worse than a packed train and delays? A packed train which has broken down in the middle of the journey and is now delayed. Commencing a series of unfortunate events, this time, the train stopped in the middle of the journey due to some technical issue.
After waiting for more than an hour for the technical issue to be resolved, it was announced that the train could go no further than the next stop and all of us would have to take another train to continue our journey. When I got down from the train, I learnt that I have to wait for at least 30 minutes before I can get on a train that can take me home.
The worst part was knowing that I will not get any chance to sit in the next train at all as crowd worth of two trains will be packed in one. All of us travelers from the faulty train will join the travelers of the incoming train, making the entire situation a little tight.
All this happened while I was coming back from work (thankfully!!). So, not only was I tired from my day’s work, I was delayed by at least 90 minutes and I was getting hungrier by the minute. Standing on the train station, waiting for the train to arrive, it was becoming difficult to see the positives of traveling via trains.
The part that was the most disheartening was the realization that I have no control over the entire issue. There was nothing that I, or anyone else, could do to make things easier. Despite everyone’s best effort to resolve the issue, I was going to be delayed. A journey that should have lasted for about 45 minutes, ended up being longer than 2 hours.
Now, every time my train stops in the middle of the journey, I get a little scared and apprehensive. What if there is another technical issue that can not be resolved and I will have to wait at another station for hours before I resume my journey?
Fortunately, the bad experiences are not my normal. They only happen once in a while. And the ugly one was an extremely rare incident. Despite the negatives, I always look forward to my train journeys. If nothing else, they give me some time with myself — to read, to appreciate people and the outside world.
