Delhi, 5 am. In the station waiting room I'm waiting for my train that is due to leave to Amritsar at 7.20. I've been here for nearly an hour, coming by taxi from the domestic terminal where I bought a flight from Jammu to Srinagar. I couldn't make the purchase from home because non Indian credit cards were not accepted by Spice Jet, but I solved the problem at the company counter.

The scene is extraordinary, very lively for its movement. People lying on the marble floor or on the steel benches, men washing themselves, having a massage, some tie very complicated turbans, some read, yawn, get dressed or resignedly like me put up with the repeated obnoxious announcements being blared over us continuously from the loudspeakers, as if from a jammed record, no matter your determination to rest. This is the men's waiting room, but women can also get in if they don't mind and they are of different ages, even in the bathrooms. In the women's room, on the contrary, men are not allowed in.

Even along the platforms a lot of people is lying on the ground and in the dark hall an expanse of sleeping bodies received me when I got in. I was tempted to take a picture, but I refrained in respect of their dignity.
The loudspeaker is driving me crazy; I don't know how I can stand two more hours before my train starts. Meanwhile it's dawning outside. The temperature is moderately warm, but we are still in the night. Moreover this room is air-conditioned and teeming with fans. I wonder what the temperature will be by day? They eventually announce my train, ready on platform 11. I reach it by the footbridge and take my seat. My name is in the list pinned outside the carriage.

I am taken by a surge of excitement and I enjoy this station scene that gives me over to India, terribly diverse and varied, inexplicable. Only by observing the clothes and the faces in the swarming movement of the platform I realise what is the country that welcomes me back this morning and is able to stir a ripple in my tired body who has lived two contiguous days without interruption.

In the carriage, an upper-class Indian family converse in a monotonous English, that sounds as if they pronounced it with a potato in the mouth. With wide comfortable armchairs, nice background music, you can tell this is first class, and if class here is inversely proportional to the air-conditioning temperature, this must be utmost luxury. In other words, I'm freezing. But another reason of distinction is what would make this train be called the fattening train, with multi-course breakfast, served by a host of waiters...

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