Wow I'm on the Nilgiri steam train

This is the whole inspiration for my trip! Not that I'm a railway buff but I have have always wanted to go to the famed hill stations in India which have been served by railways for over a hundred years. There's three such hill station railways, all with UNESCO World Heritage status, Darjeeling (where had to take as I arrived so late, Ooty and Shimla, which is on my destination list as it's the gateway to Daramasala, the home of the Dalai Lama. So After watching the BBC three part documentary in these hill stations I decided I had to go to Tamil Nadu and go across the Nilgiri range on a stream train!

So sixty days ago I booked my ticket, second class for 30 rupees. I had a mammoth journey to get there, leaving Thanjuvar  on the 19.15 and arriving in Salem at 00.45. I then had a very slow wait at this station for two hours .... Joining the sleepers on the station I sat on platform 1 willing time to whizz past. Luckily an inquisitive policeman joined me on my bench and we whiled away some time conversing in broken English. His children were both engineers, in fact most students I meet on buses etc are engineer students, send the guy I was queuing behind in the incredibly chaotic immigration booths at Chennai Airport was here to have a 25 year graduation reunion of his engineering class and he now lived in The States.

So I got my second train, arrived just in time to get the steam train and started the spectacular journey shrouded in mist! Slowly it broke and we were rewarded with incredible views as our carriages were pushed by the 125 year old steam train named Nilgiri Queen. We made several stops, as the engine had to take on thousands of gallons of water as it inched up hills. In total it took us 5 hours to go 30 miles, but it truly was a fantastic experience. Squeezed into my carriage was a coup,e of families and when they heard to my long train travels I was given a homemade biryani and it had just turned 7.30! I was not going to starve on this journey! It's wonderful to see how many home tourists are always travelling around. The westerners sat in first class, but I was definitely having more fun and food!