Tim Roxborogh's travel bugs: Jumping out of a moving train in India

NZ Herald·

12 Apr, 2018 05:00 PM4 mins to read

Photo / Getty Images

A weekly ode to the joys of moaning about your holiday, by Tim Roxborogh.

"Okay everyone, we'll only have 90 seconds to board before the train starts moving again. Letting you know now, the train doesn't wait for anyone!"

Words of warning from Sanjay, who was our guide for 17 days of adventures through southern India — and it's fair to say I was more than a little nervous. With a dozen clumsy Westerners in Sanjay's group, all carrying bulky backpacks, a mere minute and a half to battle through the heaving throng and on to the train before it pulled away would not leave much time to spare.

So we positioned ourselves as best we could and waited for the train to arrive. Suddenly, one of the girls needed the bathroom. "No! It's too risky! What if you don't make it back in time?" It was a unified chorus, but this young Australian evidently revelled in causing panic in people she barely knew. To rub it in, she walked unhurriedly to the bathroom, all the while knowing the train was due any minute. Even worse was her exaggerated nonchalance — toilet paper in hand — as she returned, anxiety levels in the tour group at peak level.

Everyone accounted for, the train reached the station. Unfortunately, so did the next snag to our successful boarding. The train had stopped with its doors spaced evenly either side of exactly where our group was standing, splitting us as to which door to board through.

Some attempted the door on the right, but the crowd was too big. Forced to abandon that door, we all tried the door on the left, only to find it partially blocked by an elderly chap sitting with an alarming number of banana boxes. Four of the group had somehow managed to squeeze themselves and their oversized packs past the man and his bananas when the air was pierced with a whistle. Nooooo! The train was starting again! And after only 30 seconds!

I wasn't one of those aboard, but my mate Rick was, as was Sanjay and two others, Jess and Rachel. The eight of us on the platform watched helplessly as the train began pulling away. We were losing them! Then Sanjay jumped. The drama! The train was still going slow enough that as soon as Sanjay gained his footing he was able to jog next to it, encouraging the others to jump as well. Next came Jess (who, incredibly, landed upright as if train jumping was a hobby of hers back in Straya), but still no Rachel or Rick. My mate! The train was speeding up and I was freaking out.

Held up behind the old man and the door-blocking banana boxes, Rick finally broke free, but with the train now rapidly increasing in speed, Rick's jump became one for the ages.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, would become a mental image forever tattooed in my brain: my friend leaping from a moving train in Kerala, southern India and landing with such Newton's balls-like force from his swinging backpack that his jandal burst, never to walk another day. In a minor miracle, he escaped with merely a grazed knee and a bruised elbow, but the sprawl of his landing and the death of his jandal against a hazy subcontinental backdrop of heat, dust and coconut palms was truly cinematic.

As for Rachel, she didn't make it. Which is not to say we never saw her again, just that the train was moving too fast for her to jump on to the platform. Luckily, Sanjay made a phone call to the train company, which passed instructions on to the distraught Rachel (red hair and freckles made her easy for the conductors to spot, even on a bursting Indian train) as to which stop to wait for us. We boarded the next train and — blessedly — this time it paused a fraction longer than 30 seconds. No banana boxes either.