The 23-hour train journey to Mumbai

We booked the train tickets well in advance when we were still in Malaysia through a fairly reliable travel agent in New Delhi. I was adamant from the earliest stages of our planning that we should experience the long-haul train journey. I've always loved how these journeys give a snapshot of a country and for a country the size of India it would be even more interesting. One can see the changes in the landscape, colours, climate and of course cultures (the Indians often say the language changes every 100 km or so). I drew this from my previous trips on train across China (for a gruelling 30-plus-hour) and Europe. I was clearly basking in optimistic delusion when I insisted we don't take the upper class seats but get the cheapest available seats so that we can meet masses and hear their stories (Champagne Socialist talk you see). Plus, I was comparing India favourably with China in the most ignorant way possivle so I expected the conditions were the same.

Well you'd guess from the despairing tone that the journey was far from being comfortable. It's not so much the small dirty beds or old seats, it's the perpetual smell of human faeces and urine that was hard to take. We weren't expecting anything luxurious or mod-cons, of course, but this was extremely difficult and to add, we were all fasting. About 10 hours into the trip we've gotten used to the conditions and started to loosen up.

We met a group of tabligh from Gujarat who fascinated us with the incredibly Malay faces of some of them. The fascination is mutual. They have never met Muslims from Southeast Asia (some never knew) and we must've invoked intriguing curiosities, as evident in their many questions about our way of life, country and state of the Muslim people. They took pity on us when they saw we had our iftar with measly biscuits so they invited us to join them for a feast on the train. We were treated with utmost respect and appropriate honours to a guest (something we shall miss for a long time as this goodwill is never to be shown to us again in the rest of Muslim India). Others on the train, gave us fruits as well as bought us chai and join in the conversation. We were then deeply in love with the Indian people. The experienced humbled us, and is something we hold on to as a testimony to their graciousness and hospitality - especially on our difficult days when we were ill treated by some in India.