I'm in a small village in Uttar Pradesh and I'm trying to make a Skype call to Ma and Pa to send some festive cheer. Unfortunately the place that I'm staying in is bereft of internet access because of 'unpaid bill' if I'm to believe the message I'm presented on login. I've found a restaurant that has wi-fi and agree to Skype with my parents at 6pm but on my return the owner says to me 'wifi not working' so I ask around at a few other places and it is clear that wifi is temporarily defunct for the entire village. I feel like I'm coming down with a cold because I naively didn't bring very many warm clothes. I'm leaving tomorrow on a 3 hour train journey to a town called Chitrakut so I figure I'll get some rest and try again tomorrow as there's nothing more I can do here.
Sure enough, I wake up feeling like I've been hit by a freight train, check out of the hotel and shiver my way on a 40 minute rickshaw jaunt to the village train station at 6am, not helping my cold. There's a shopkeeper selling steaming hot chai tea so I buy one and huddle around the small stone hearth outside his stall to warm my hands. He adds a couple of extra fuel bricks to stoke the fire made from dried buffalo dung cakes called 'gomaya'. There's no-one at the station save for a couple of cows nosing through the bins for scarce signs of nutrition.
The train arrives on time and I'm on my way although with all the windows and doors open there's a cold blast whistling through the compartment. I wrap myself in the scarf and thin blanket that I have and watch the wheat fields, cows and rocky outcrops pass by. The train starts to fill up with locals bringing many different goods: wraps of sticks, sacks of potatoes, bicycles. It becomes increasingly difficult to establish which station I'm at; some of the stations have names in English, some only in Hindi, some not at all. The train gets delayed at a country station. There are no announcements so I get out and take a look and all I can see is a red signal. There are lots of goods trains passing through carrying coal and I hypothesise that we must wait for the lines ahead to be free to satisfy my own personal need for an explanation. We all wait patiently at this station with no crying from children or grumbling from adults. 2 hours pass and the train begins to creep forward once again. As we roll forwards I crane my head to see past the accumulating crowds and ask my fellow passengers for station names. I receive a mix of responses and try to assimilate the information to establish my location.
Despite the neck-craning and enquiries I miss my station. As I am on the Allahabad train it looks like this is where I will be staying tonight. I ask the man now sitting opposite to me where he is going and he replies 'Allahabad' so I will just get off when he does. We have a second unexplained 2 hour wait at another lonesome country station. My stomach rumbles but I'm worried the array of luke-warm salads and puri carried on the heads of the elegantly grubby and enervated sari-clad women will move the movements of my feeble Western bowels into territory I'd rather not explore on this crowded convoy. The train's latrine is not a place to unwind with an iPad and make social media updates. I take a few handfuls of the trail mix I have in my bag to pacify the most immediate pangs of hunger.
The dusk gives way to night and glittering acid yellow lights begin to stipple the horizon. We trundle through the fog into a large station station and the man opposite me takes his belongings and alights with me in his wake. The delays at the country stations have protracted the usual Orchha to Allahabad journey from 6 hours to 14 hours. I plod out of the station drained and thick-headed from my cold with with my travelling appurtenances weighing me down. I make my way apparently north having had plenty of time to study the Allahabad map in my well-thumbed loaned Lonely Planet guide. I've picked a hotel close to the cathedral and ask for directions. After numerous rotations of the map and blank looks I learn that the man opposite me didn't disembark in Allahabad but in Naini, a satellite town to the south. It's getting late and there is a paucity of rickshaw drivers but I find a driver willing to take me to the hotel I'd chosen in Allahabad. It's not too far and we agree 200 rupees. We putter across the 1.5km Yamuna Bridge, one of the longest in India, close to the Triveni Sangam where the muddy Ganges and the deeper clearer waters of the Yamuna river meet. This is site of the Kumbh Mela where every 12 years around 120 million Hindus gather to bathe in the river. We pull up by the roadside and my driver turns to me.
'Here is hotel'
I look up at the sign on the front of the building which reads Hotel Aurangzeb.
'This isn't the hotel I asked for'
'Yes, this is hotel'
'Can you take me to the Hotel Tepso please'
'This is near district city lines, very far from here, another 200 rupees'
'We agreed 200 rupees to Hotel Tepso'
'We agree 300 rupees'
I'm tired and cold, my body aches and all I want is sleep. Our exchange escalates to a heated debate and it seems our prior agreement in Naini has been lost in the winds crossing the Yamuna Bridge. I dig my heels in and refuse to pay until we arrive at Hotel Tepso. My driver castigates me for not playing his game of 'ring-a-ring-of-commission-paying hotels', grudgingly rotates the rickshaw and acquiesces to drive me a further 2 minutes to the agreed destination to receive his 200 rupee payment.
The Hotel Tepso is a little more expensive than my accommodations to date but given my state I gladly pay the 1,500 rupee charge and collapse into my room. The man at reception comes to my room to show me the convoluted operation of levers and switches I must engage to ensure myself of a hot shower in the morning. I request the wifi password while he is here and key it into my laptop. 'Invalid password' is the response. 'No, password is right, computer is wrong'. I have little to no life left in me to have this discussion and instead make a quick search on his computer at reception to see how I go about unearthing his wifi password. After a 15 minute rummage through the internet it turns out this is not an easy task on tools of the Windows 95 era of personal computing for those with sub-network administrator skills. I abandon the exercise and resolve to find another hotel in the morning after some essential recovery.
After a long rest and my first hot shower in India I haul myself through the dusty streets of Allahabad to seek out another hotel. I find a room at the large and rambling Hotel Prayag where the wifi works. With my Westerner's thirst for internet slaked, I fire off some emails and plan to rest here for a day or two. I'm going to need to recoup some strength before I head to the bustle of Varanasi next week.