The act of getting a ticket to Jaipur with 100 other Indian people in a 20×20 foot area was, for lack of a better word, challenging. The first problem was that the idea of a queue doesn’t seem to exist in the local Indian dictionary. People were cutting in line left and right, and people were getting very upset. So upset that those in front were starting to forcefully push back those who were trying to cut. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I felt like it might have been a high-caste/low-caste tension. Something akin to people in the U.S. thinking they get higher priority just because they have more money. So these rather annoying people at the train station felt like they had a right to bypass 20 people standing in line.

Surprisingly, the women were the worst. Thankfully most of the Indians in line wouldn’t stand for it. The tension seemed to escalate, and there was an ever increase in pushing and elevated voices. The conniption went on for quite a while with various people, and continued after I had made my purchase. After about 30 minutes a ‘police officer’ came to enforce the crowd by physically explaining what a queue was with his 3-foot-long cane. This method seemed to work quite well until the officer’s cell phone rang and he decided to take the call in a much less noisy spot.

G and I, however, were still in a bit of a pickle since the ticket I received from the clerk gave no pertinent information about when the train left, what number the train was, what the name of the train was, or where the hell we were supposed to sit. So, in an effort to get all this information, we braved the same insane line one more time together. With no local law enforcement, and no 3-foot cane, we had to spread out, creating a barrier for the impatient, queue-oblivious people while waiting patiently like civilized persons. That patience wore thin though, and we spent most of the time pushing people back while making our progress forward.

After we reached the clerk, we found out that the train would leave at 6:10AM and were then instructed to go to the enquiry office for more information. I went to the “enquiry office” and was told that the ticket I purchased, no more than a half an hour ago, was for today. I looked down at the ticket and it read 25/10/09 (that’s October 25th for those back in the states). The one piece of information the ticket had on it was being disputed by the train station employee!

I repeated my question about what the train number was, when the train left, and where I was supposed to go, and was then pointed in the direction of platform one as if I was supposed to leave right now. I gave up. We had enough information to at least know that we needed to be at the train station by 6:10am. We left to grab some food and pack things up at home. We needed to be at the train station early…