Taken From All About My Hat The Hippy Trail 1972 ISBN 978-0993210716
The following day, July 14 1972, Al and Diane went first to the Iranian Embassy in Delhi to get a visa, then to the main railway station, which was about a mile from Connaught Circus, to buy tickets to Amritsar.
There was a queue of about fifty men at the one counter that seemed to be staffed and service was slow, even for India. Al and Diane queued for about and hour and then they were approached by a well-dressed and middle-aged English lady.
“Excuse me” she said, “do you know there is a lady's queue?”
“No,” said Diane, “I can't see it, where is it?”
“Oh you can't see it my dear because there are so few women buying tickets, but you can go straight to the front of this queue and they will serve you next my dear.”
So Al gave the money to Diane, and, sure enough, when she went to the counter the man serving went straight to her and she bought the tickets without having to wait at all.
Next day, they took a tut-tut – a three-wheeler motorised rickshaw – to the railway station, negotiated the crowds and found the correct platform and immediately boarded the train.
The train was just about to leave when Diane jumped up saying she needed to buy some food and water and rushed straight off the train, taking her bag with her, and ran down the platform.
Al waited a few minutes, and, as the train was obviously about to leave and Diane had not come back, he quickly hopped off the train and looked up and down the platform.
Diane was nowhere to be seen!
Al didn't know whether to wait in case she missed the train or get on the train in case she had got back on into a different carriage.
The train started to pull away.
As it began accelerating, Al decided all he could sensibly do was get back on. He spotted an open carriage door and ran and jumped aboard. An Indian voice said in English “Well done Sahib!”
Al found a seat and sat and enjoyed the journey but he discovered it was not possible to go from one carriage to another whilst the train was moving, unless, as some men seemed to do, he climbed out the door and onto the roof. He wasn't going to do that.
The train journey from Delhi to Amritsar was about two hundred and fifty miles and took over ten hours with several long stops at stations. By the time they arrived it was dark. There were plenty of Europeans and maybe Americans alighting from the train, but no sign of Diane. Al went directly to find free accommodation at the Golden Temple. It was signposted in English and a walk of about a mile.
After he found a bed in a room, he headed straight for the food hall. Inside, sitting with a small group of European travellers, was Diane.
After dinner of rice and dahl with chapatti, provided free to travellers by the Sikh Golden Temple donors, Al met with Diane and they agreed to try to catch a bus all the way to Rawalpindi in Pakistan. This would involve crossing the border but no visas were needed. Then in Rawalpindi they could go to nearby Islamabad to collect Diane's money and get visas for Afghanistan.
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