It's 9:56 in the morning and we are on the train. It was supposed to be a 2 hour express train journey beginning at 8:25pm. We already knew it was delayed by about 1 1/2 hours so left the hotel at 9pm this gave time to get to the station and find the platform and position of our carriage.
After arriving at the station we saw it was 1 more hour late so Sharon happily waited inside while I went exploring. I kept regularly checking the arrival board and our train kept being delayed more. Every hour it was moved another hour. At 11pm the restaurant seemed to close so we moved to the platform to wait. It was quite cold and the humidity of the fog made it harder to keep warm. I kept checking the board and the arrival time kept moving. At about 2 am the board was saying something like 2:45. I went to the office to get some better information. I had the time table so if I know what time the train had actually departed each station as well as where it was now I can work it out for myself. After gathering the relevant info I made a guess of 4am, nothing like their 2:45. After informing our newfound friends that were in the same situation we got a bit more settled for the wait. At about 3:30 am I went to check station departure times again. After some quick calculating I revised the estimate to extremely close to 5:30am. Sharon was quite cold, it was about 5 degrees, so went to the warmth of the waiting room. At about 4:40 she came back and the train indicators on the platform started showing our train number, the excitement was building. The train arrived at 5:10am. Finally we were on the thing, and only almost 9 hours late. Why the hell the rail people couldn't do a proper estimate beats me but if they had we could have gone back to the hotel for a bit of sleep instead of constantly feeling on edge that the train was almost here. Well, we are in the outskirts of Delhi. And only deprived of sleep, there is one lady I met who will miss her 11:45 flight.
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