Wednesday February 6th - Maitree Express

Awake well before our 5 a.m. alarm. Today we leave Bangladesh for India, expired visas permitting. Most of the packing was done last night so we dress and go, having to wake the night porter to open the gate to let us out onto the pavement. D summons an Uber which arrives in a couple of minutes. A very smart Toyota driven by a young man who seems to be awake. The route to Dhaka Cantonment station looks straightforward to us but our man drives 20 yards and stops to ask directions from a pedestrian. He nearly misses the flyover and then does miss the first entrance to the station forecourt. Luckily there is a second one.

The documents state that you must be at the station at 06.15. We manage to be there at 05.35 but the queue has already started. Taking our place we are just about to look for coffee when the shutters go up and the queue moves into a waiting room where Emigration forms are issued and require completion. Shortly after 6.15 people start disappearing through a doorway and we follow. Our bags are put through a scanner and we are directed to separate counters. Both of the officials spot that we have overrun our visas by a day. Higher authority is summoned, looks at the passports, hears our story, shrugs and waves us through. Phew!

The train is sitting in the platform and we are encouraged to board forthwith. There isn't much reason not to board as the platform has no facilities at all. D does walk up to the front of the train for photos but that is the entertainment done. His attempt to photograph passing trains on the non platform side from the open door is curtailed by a passing policeman. Today's train is made up of Indian coaches, on other days it could be a Bangladeshi rake. We are in coach H2, almost at the back of the train, in what appears to be a reject Rajdhani vehicle. It is grubby inside and out, with bits of metal trim hanging loose from the walls. We have only once seen a First AC vehicle this bad and that was in the outer reaches of the North Western Zone.

Our allocation is two seats in Cabin D, usually a four berth, but as this is a day train they squeeze extra passengers in. We have the forward facing window seat and the one next to it so D is happy. Not long after we settle in a couple occupy the seats opposite. We greet them but they don't seem to speak English. With around ninety minutes to go until departure this is a good opportunity to get the blog up to date. Just before departure another man joins our cabin and sits on our side. He doesn't seem to speak English either.

We pull out three minutes late and retrace the route we took two nights ago but in daylight. Once we clear Dhaka the countryside is dominated by rice paddies, cultivated by hand although modern water pumps appear quite common. We pause a couple of times to cross incoming trains and one of these has roof riders. The main feature of the trip is the Bangabandhu Bridge, 4.6 km long and carrying a busy dual carriageway as well as the railway. Trains are subject to a severe speed restrictions for the crossing. D tries to get pictures from the open door but is once more rebuked. A combination of haze and filthy windows mean that this picture off the internet will have to do.

There is an on train catering service but we pass on breakfast and lunch, having had a huge feast last night. The couple appear to be carrying enormous quantities of food and have regular meals during the journey, spending the rest of the time sleeping. The third man has his meals delivered by people from elsewhere on the train, served on crockery. He must be a big shot. We have watched the BBC documentary about the Maitree Express which featured a Bangladeshi vendor who was saving up for a coolbag so his Dairy Milks didn't melt before he could sell them. A man with a basket of various chocolate bars turned up and R broke her 30 year Nestles boycott by having a KitKat. We don't think that it was the same chap.

About four hours in we cross another spectacular bridge, this time over the river Padma. D notices engineering plates that say "Braithwaite & Kirk, Darlington, England". When it is looked up it turns out to be the Hardinge Bridge, opened in 1915. Soon it is time to say farewell to Bangladesh. We pull up at the station on the BD side of the border where the various security personnel and caterers deboard. There is quite a bump as a new loco is attached at the front of the train. Five minutes later we stop at Gede on the Indian side, where a fresh detail of smartly dressed Border Force personnel join us, about half of them female. Our cabin is sniffed for security purposes by a rather portly black labrador who moves on quickly because of D's feet. We know that we are in India because we can read the registration plates on the cars.

It doesn't take long before the train is underway again, reaching much higher speeds than at any point in Bangladesh. A man comes round with the Indian immigration forms that we need to complete, much simpler than they used to be. We make excellent progress until we join the main line from the north, when it becomes stop start for the last 45 minutes in Kolkata. The train terminates at Chitpur, on the north side of the city, Built to relieve congestion at the two main stations, Sealdah and Howrah, we arrived here on our very first visit to Kolkata in 2011. It seemed rather remote and unused then and not much appears to have changed.

We all pile off the train and onto the platform where a queue has formed. Our coach is towards the back of the train so we are towards the back of the queue. At least there is shade. D walks along the platform to take a picture of the loco but a large uniformed Sikh puts paid to that. "No camera. No photo". Meanwhile all around are cheerfully snapping and selfying with their phones. After an hour of stop and start in the queue we reach the point where D can snap R on his phone with a loco in the background. Given the cramped facilities in the arrivals hall it is difficult to see how things could be done any quicker. Why can't they find a way to do it on the train.

The customs hall is chaos and, accidentally we almost walk through without being checked. Having done all that we then have to queue again at the prepaid taxi counter. Traffic in Kolkata is just not in the same league as Dhaka and we can almost relax on the way into the city. A navigational error by D means we try to find our lodgings on the wrong street but we get there in the end. 

We stayed at the Harrington Residency two years ago and decided we liked it. It is a two room, upmarket B&B attached to an  Art Gallery in an early 20th Century mansion block. The lobby has been upgraded from a 25 watt bulb to a flourescent tube and the lift returned to action but otherwise it is as we remember. We are quickly installed in the other room i.e. not the one we had last time. We are both tired so decide to eat locally. At the far end of the block, on the ground floor is a new place called Dnt Spk Pls that describes itself as a gastropub. This we have to see. The food is innovative and quite good, if expensive but we don't linger as tonight appears to be Lack of Talent night featuring a local band at about 130 decibels. Back in our room we have no trouble sleeping.