the day that lasted a week

so if you know me, you know that since watching darjeeling limited, i've become slightly obsessed with indian trains. imagine my joy when i heard that i was finally able to ride one. biju told us that saturday we had an opportunity to go to the aids prevention day in tirvandrum i jumped at the chance. tirvandrum is the capital of kerala and is 4 hours by train south of kochi. and of course, aids prevention is what i do. the convention had 150 hiv positive children attending from throughout kerala and surrounding states. needless to say, i quickly agreed to go.

at 4:30am we dragged our butts out of bed and made our way to the train station which was a little overwhelming in our half-awake state. nothing like stepping over sleeping bodies while being pushed in line. for having no idea of what we were doing, we succeeded quite well. bought the tickets, managed to find the right platform and secured seats facing each other. little did we know that the train is similar to the bus in that there is no limit to the number of people allowed on it. quickly we found out bench that holds 3 comfortably was fitting 5 easily. the 4 hours passed quickly as we watching the kerala scenery flash by. we arrived in tirvandrum and the minute we stepped outside we were swarmed by rickshaw drivers. we negotiated a (somewhat) fair price and all 5 of us...yeah five, crammed into a rickshaw. it was...close.

we arrived at the kanakakunnu place (a beautiful recommended tourist place in all the guide books) where the convention was being held. immediately we were ushered (despite protesting) to the front of the auditorium...and given front row seats. and we were intro ducted as the 'eurpoean delegation group' that was studying hiv. i don't know how to say this...but we were a big deal. i now have a taste of what hollywood stars face. tons of high quality cameras and video cameras were constantly in our face. i was actually interviewed by the 'largest broadcasting network in india' because i was a 'hiv expert from the states.' it was my 15 minutes of fame. who knows, maybe my face is plastered somewhere online. the convention itself was great (the parts that we were able to understand). it was put on by the global kerala initiative and the program is called Keraleeyam- a three year old program focused on removing the social stigma of a positive status, especially with children. a great organization- i hope to work with them soon. it was really encouraging to see all of the attention on hiv and the efforts to better the system for positive people. again, i can't wait until i can start working.

the children were amazing. the best part of the trip by far. they loved us, and we had so much fun with them. they did an art contest where the winner was awarded 5,000 rupies. they asked me to serve as a judge on decided (thanks to my artist skills), the art the kids made was the greatest thing i've even seen, they had real talent. the theme was social support for children with hiv. there is a picture of the winning painting. in addition, the head of the organization unexpectedly pledged an addition 5,000 rupies to every positive child present at the convention. they actually called me onstage to present the checks to the children. greatest experience ever. they were so incredibly excited because their name was called in front of everyone, it was great to watch. i had a huge smile on my face for the entire day. we had an amazing lunch and tea with them and were sad to see the day end. after the convention the leaders wanted to take us out for dinner and show us some of tirvandrum before returning us to the train station. (by the way, tirvandrum is home to the greatest beach- and greatest beach resort- in kerala, visit me and we WILL visit there, promise). so good.

the return trip was a little more...eventful lets say. we were cutting it close with making the train so we rushed onto the first car available only to find it was a sleeper car. we walked through a couple of cars and they were all the same. so we figured that maybe this train was only sleeper cars. it wasn't very crowded so we found some benches and settled in for the 4 hour trip home. about 2 hours into the train a worker came through checked our tickets and told us to go to the front car because we didn't have first class tickets. we walked all the way up as far as we could go, and that car was still a first class sleeper. we figured that this must have been what he meant, so again, we sat down and fell asleep. yet again, with an hour and a half left in our journey, our tickets were checked and we were again kicked out. turns out we had to stand and wait until the next stop, hop off the train, run down the tracks, and get back on in another car. the first car we went into was clearly a third class train. it was packed, literally people were curled into the luggage compartment. and we were crammed in and stuck right next to the latrine (bathroom) and it was foul. we lasted a few stops here until we hopped another car which turned out to be even more crowded. we thought we were getting close to our stop so we figure we would just tough it out. the latrine smell was like getting punched in the face every time the door was opened. it was putrid. we also seemed to interrupt some sort of drug/sex scam being ran at the back of the train. and we were constantly stared it. and pictures were not so discreetly taken. despite this, in our delirium we were in relatively in high spirits and amused. our favorite was the by the sink there was a picture of a creepy naked baby with an apple in it crotch that said 'keep smiling.' we kept that in mind during the trying period. 'creepy apple crotch baby says smile.' we thought that we were getting close until we heard that we were still an hour away. putting us an hour and a half behind schedule. we decided at this point that the 70 rupees (not even close to a dollar) was worth it for the upgrade back to sleeper car. so once again, we hopped car and ran down the tracks to a sleeper car. we were attempting to sneak on and hide for the last hour (not like we could ever hide in this culture- ever) but the train started to move and we had to make a running darjeeling limited entrance...right in front of a train worker. smoooooth. so of course we paid and the upgrade was well worth it as we peacefully slept the remaining hour and attempted to block the previous hour from our memories. when we finally got there home was even further away when the rickshaw drivers got lost and tried to rip us off. needless to say when we finally made it home it had been a 22 hour day and we could barely stay awake in our cold showers and immediately fell into bed.

moments like these are hilarious to me. trying yes, but great stories. and the essence of international travel. i figure that situations like these are a great way to measure the group dynamics. and how successful the group will be in the long run (for example, being forced to take a different ferry in MV and having to walk over 2 miles with heavy bags in freezing temperates...) the moral of this story is that i'm blessed with a great group of people here. seriously, top of the line. we laughed our way through one of the more stressful situations imaginable and it will remain a great story for a long time. overall it was an incredibly fantastic day. and well worth it in every way.