The sky is a dull pre-dawn grey as night turns to day, and I'm about to get my first taste of travel proper in big Indian cities.

The boulevard on the approach to New Delhi Railway Station is a logjam.

Fumes, traffic, horns, tent-districts, cows, Tuk Tuks, rubbish, more horns, beggars, mats, fires, more rubbish, buses, and chaos.

I abandon my motionless Uber and proceed on foot.

It’s a staggering experience for two fresh‑off‑the‑boat Brits, even after travelling in the Far East and the Levant.

My friend Cameron and I are in Delhi, heading to catch a train to Agra before travelling on to a Hindu wedding in Ramnagar later in the week.

At New Delhi Railway Station

When we arrive at New Delhi station, we’re immediately spotted by a guard‑not‑guard with henna‑dyed hair, who tells us the arrival time of our train (#20807: The Hirakud Express) and the platform it’s expected to arrive on.

We’re far-sighted enough to know what train we are meant to catch, but foolish enough to overlook buying food and water for the day.

Fortunately, our helpful apparition tells us where we can buy both.

And in case this sounds as simple as grabbing a Gregg’s in Leeds or an In‑N‑Out Burger, the station’s entrance is basically a corrugated sheet bearing the station name atop a faded, sorry‑looking wall studded with iron gates.

A narrow entrance at the far end of a lively parking lot grants access to the station foyer that’s as chipped and faded as a high school gymnasium in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

In the far corner sits a battered CT scanner through which every passenger obediently passes their luggage, despite the absence of any security staff.

We follow suit and, on Platform 1, buy enough bottles of water and bags of Bombay mix to ensure that we don’t need change from a single 500‑rupee note—the lowest currency denomination we could acquire at the airport but tantamount to a vast fortune by street seller standards.

A minor god of Indian Railways

Apparition is a great word for our train-catching guardian angel.

Any slight deviation from his designated route—to take a leak or snap a photo—invites his uncanny reappearance and another round of benevolent instructions.

As first‑timers in India, we’re extremely grateful for his advice.

He tells us:

1. Where to stand for our carriage (you don’t walk down trains in India)
2. Where our bunks are
3. How to assemble our beds
4. Where the train originated from
5. Where it’s ultimately bound
6. The number of stops until Agra Cantt (our stop)

In addition to this, he walks us directly to our precise catching-out spot while informing us how to cross-reference essential ticket information with station signage.

Not that you could miss the train announcements—they play on a continuous loop, delivered by a very bossy‑sounding woman speaking the Queen’s English.

Genuine station staff member or not (I suspect not), he is invaluable.

For his help, he rightfully expects a humble tip.

Being essentially daft and unsubtle people, Cameron and I completely miss the subtle gesture for baksheesh—a demure drawing of the hand down from in front of the forehead to the chin—so he has to resort to the rather more obvious motion of grabbing his wallet and wafting it open and close under our noses.

We cotton on and give him one of our unbreakable 500-rupee notes.

All of my Indian travel stories are written faithfully from my diary, but, for the purposes of imagery, here are a few unedited notes.

‘Delhi (New) Railway Station is run down. Shabby and dirty. Smell of effluent from rivers of sh*t and piss on the tracks.

Gantry between the platforms affords good photos of the city which we take. Low-class coaches look like genuinely dreadful places to be.

Unlit and full of shady and desperately poor characters. No place to be with all your valuables and money. We are in class 3A.’

The almighty Hirakud Express

Many trains in India travel immense distances.

The Hirakud Express started its journey in Amritsar, the Sikh capital of India, yesterday and will make its steady way southeast to Visakhapatnam on the Bay of Bengal, 2,570 kilometres away from where it started.

The entire journey takes just under 46 hours.

We’re on this train for a short leg of its journey, from Delhi to Agra, in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

From Agra, we have an overnight train booked to take us to Ramnagar, which is where the wedding is being held.

We have accommodation booked in Ramnagar for tomorrow night (a Monday).

This will be our first sleep since Friday.

As we board the train, still accompanied by our burgundy-haired apparition, we embrace the hostel-like nature of travelling sleeper class on Indian Railways.

Families are starting their day, tidying their bunks to make them serviceable for day-travelling.

The train stands for a long time on the platform in Delhi, and lots of passengers get on and off with all their luggage.

As tired as we are, we still help people heft their bags on and off as we head to our berths.

Paying tribute to our platform deity

The 500-rupee note is no doubt the crispest in Apparition’s wallet.

Of the 11 ticket classes on Indian Railways, 3A is the third-highest, and only the relatively well-off Indians can afford to travel in it.

People speak some English and have expensive smartphones that are in near-constant use.

In that much at least, travel on Indian Railways is not much different from train travel in the UK.

But that’s where the similarities end.

In the UK, we have the three Ss to report suspicious activity (remember them: see it, say it, sorted).

In India, you padlock your luggage to your bunk (or yourself).

You can rent a chain and padlock from the chain-and-padlock wallah. Or bring your own.

There are even special eye loops welded to each bunk to secure one’s luggage, but not everyone uses them.

The arrangement of Indian Railway's berths

You can learn everything you need to know about catching trains in India and practically everywhere else in the world from The Man in Seat 61’s encyclopaedic and award-winning site.

But the layout of the bunks is worth a brief description.

Class 3A

The "A" stands for “air-conditioned,” and class 3A is basically open-plan. The carriages of this class are arranged into 9-bunk berths.

Three of these bunks are stacked along the axis of the carriage.

Across the narrow aisle, the other 6 bunks are divided into parallel stacks of 3, arranged perpendicularly to the aisle.

The topmost bunks are higher than the windows and have no view.

Class 2A

Class 2A follows a similar arrangement, but the bunks are in stacks of 2, to give 6 bunks to a berth.

In this class, a thin piece of translucent netting for each stack provides some privacy.

The top bunk in the aisle of class 2A must be very cosy indeed, as you are quite by yourself and above the foot traffic in the walkway.

Class 1A

Class 1A is how the Orient Express might appear if it featured in the zombie film 28 Days Later.

Berths of four bunks are partitioned from the aisle, and from the other four‑bunk cabins, by thin walls and a sliding door.

Life on the Delhi to Agra train journey

We pull out of Delhi at a pedestrian pace (this train averages 35 mph on its two-day journey).

The tracks pass through the most dilapidated suburbs, but then again, rich settlements are seldom bulldozed to make way for railway lines.

Everywhere is overflowing with rubbish.

Rubbish, slums, and sheer fatigue make for a dispiriting start to our trip.

Tiredness is the main cause.

We’re on our third day without sleep, and the prospect of spending a full day in Agra during a national holiday, finding safe places to eat while hefting all our luggage, makes us wince.

Our bags are heavier than we would like because of the items we need for the wedding.

Even though we’ve travelled so far, we still want to look smart.

And while it’s sensible to be strict about where you eat in India, the wedding makes us even more cautious.

Travelling so far and spending so much money only to fall ill and miss the main event would be a huge letdown for everyone.

There is a selfish element to our dispirited feelings too.

We want to enjoy ourselves, but today looks as if it’s going to be a test, just like the previous three have been.

Still, as Paul Theroux writes in The Tao of Travel, “Travel, its very motion, ought to suggest hope. … I think travellers are essentially optimists, or else they would never go anywhere.”

Perhaps the best way forward is to forget the usual pleasures of going abroad, accept that this trip will be a grit‑your‑teeth affair, and find another lens through which to appreciate our surroundings.

Vendors, wallahs, noise, and complaints

As I’m chewing on these thoughts, a middle-aged couple boards the train and takes their seats opposite us.

After chaining their luggage to their beds, they begin munching samosa chaat.

Before they finish their meal, their body language turns noticeably antsy, and the husband disappears for a while.

He returns with the conductor, having complained that Cameron and I are sitting in their bunks.

The bunks are designed so that, at night, 6 people can sleep soundly while in the day, the middle bunk of each stack of 3 folds down to form two opposed, slightly stiff 3-piece sofas large enough to seat all 6 passengers.

To satisfy the couple, we all have to climb into our sleeping positions.

It’s late morning and there is ample room for everyone, but fair enough—lying down it is.

Dozing in our top bunks, resting our eyes allows some optimism to take root.

There’s an awful lot of activity for the number of people on the train, however.

Sitting back and enjoying your journey in reserved quiet is evidently not the Indian way.

Adding to the hubbub are the wallahs that get on at every station and drone up and down the train with their honed and repetitive chants.

“PITTAPITTAPITTA. … Pittapittapitta. … pittapittapitta.”

“Agraperthaaloopitta.”

“Chaiiiiiiiiii.”

My head is right next to the carriage door, and the way it flaps open and closed is at first infuriating, but quickly becomes comically sublime.

Clack-clack! Open. Clack-clack! Closed. … “Chaiiiiiiii.”

I lie back and rub my temples, hoping that even chai wallahs need to sleep, otherwise I won’t get any on my overnight train later.

The final stretch to Agra

A sweet passenger on the phone to his daughter has promised to tell us when we reach Agra. There are no passenger announcements on trains in India.

He buys a game for his daughter from the children’s‑games wallah (yes, there is such a thing), and, reassured that we can’t miss our stop, we take full advantage of the chance to doze.

After a few hours, the train begins to slow, and this gentleman tells us it’s time to get off.

I have been using my rucksack as a lumpy pillow, so I have no need to pack.

In the vestibule next to the loos, we join a gaggle of passengers hanging out of the side of the train.

When it comes to a halt, we jump down onto a platform in hot and sunny Agra.