February 16, 2018. One of the worst and most inconvenient experiences so far in India was waiting for the train ride from Agra to Jaipur. The Indian train network is vast and extensive but renowned for its caducity and inefficiency.
My train was scheduled to pass by the old Agra Fort station at past 10 in the morning and I was in the station half an hour before the train was scheduled to arrive. I didn’t want to miss it, since it would just be one of the train’s many stops from its origin, I think from all the way in Varanasi. It was announced that it would be delayed by 3.5 hours to around 2:00 PM. At 1:30 PM, they announced that it would arrive at 2:30 PM. At 2:00 PM they announced it would arrive at 3 PM. At 2:45 PM they announced the train will arrive at 3:30 PM. This series of false hopes continued until the train finally arrived at 7:30 in the evening. That was a delay of nine hours. They might as well have announced it from the beginning that it would arrive in the evening so I didn’t have to endure hoping and waiting in such an inconvenient and unkempt station. I didn’t want to leave the station because every time an announcement comes, they’d say it would arrive in just half an hour. I had almost dropped dead out of fatigue on the floor! Worse, it took another half hour before the train left the station!
The actual train ride itself was just more or less 5 hours. I arrived in Jaipur at such an ungodly hour so weary and disappointed I had wanted to abandon this trip altogether. But all is well. Part of the authentic Indian experience to just leave it all up to fate and not on a strict schedule. In other words, be flexible.
