The berth on the overnight train from Coimbatore was shared with a woman and her two young children. The kids wanted to sleep almost immediately after departing Coimbatore which meant that we had to take our positions in the two top bunks. This gave us some time to ourselves. Jan stuck her headphones in and nodded off to some garage tunes and I caught up on some reading, the book is Red Legs by John Greene and it's a cracker. We arrived at Chennai at around 7am...

The overnight train from Bangalore to Coimbatore left about an hour late but arrived on time. We had a berth to ourselves...almost. As we pulled out of Bangalore station a mouse darted out from the corner of the cabin an went under the bed. All food and bags were thrown on to the top bunk and we squeezed onto the lower bunk for a surprisingly comfortable 8 hour journey. We arrived at Coimbatore at 7am and neither of us were in the mood for the hussle-bussle of ...

We had an easy 3 hour train journey from Bangalore to Mysore. We booked seats in the old fashioned, non air conditioned first class compartment. The roomy booth was fairly clean and the four huge fans bolted to the ceiling made the morning temperatures more than bearable. The great thing was that the windows fully opened too. Very quickly the urban scenery surrendered to the countryside, the air felt fresher and the pollution lifted from our lungs. The warm sun ...

The over night train journey from Hospet to Bangalore was pretty uncomfortable albeit down to our own making. We had two side berths which during the day the lower berth converted to two single chairs opposite each other, then at night the backs fold down to make the lower bunk. One of us didn't fancy sleeping in the top bunk alone and so the two of us shoehorned ourselves into the bottom bunk and fidgeted for the next 8 hours, sleepless. Upon arrival at Bangalo...

Hospet is a 7 hour train journey from Vasco Da Gama, we shared the berth with another traveller and a Goan businessman. Janet and I spoke in hushed tones about the scenery and our plans for the next few days and our berth-buddies dozed. An hour in to the journey the Indian guy sits up and proclaims "I'm bored, where do you come from?" a great ice breaker, that got the ball rolling for a steady flow of interesting conversation for the next few hours. We got some g...