ABOVE: a shot from the 6 hr woman's only train carriage. Barhampur- Kolkata .

The morning after the wedding festivities, Agatha (my flatmate) and I decided to head out early. We got up at 6am and bought the first available ticket to Kolkata. All the reserved AC tickets were sold so we had two options, travel in the unreserved AC area or travel in the non-AC women's compartment. We decided to take the women's compartment, a first experience for me!

In the women's compartment, you had women of all ages and all income levels traveling. There was a giant mob to get on to the train and find seats, women had already started bickering over seats and space. It was loud and busy from the start! While this sort of situation may be overwhelming for some, it was such a unique way of traveling and people watching. Because we took the non AC women's compartment, we ended up spending a whopping 60RS ($1) for a 6 hour ride, instead of 200RS ($4). To give you another way of looking at this, it costs me 30RS to take an auto rikshaw(taxi) one way to the metro station from my house (which is 10 minutes away). 

Basically, this was one of my favorite train experiences and it also happened to be the cheapest. I know that for longer train rides, taking the seated non-AC seated compartment may become tiring, but for short distances, I'm sold on it!

From Kolkata we took another train, a sleeper AC train, all the way back to Delhi. The journey was about 15hours and pretty enjoyable since I had the company of my flatmate! The sleeper trains have a fold out 'bunk bed' type of thing, so they end up being quite comfortable for the longer distance. 

Tonight i'm off for my longest train journey! I'm finally taking a nice vacation and seeing my family in Bangalore. Not too much work and plenty of time to relax. I can not wait!