What a better setting for a "town of books", or as some would call it the "book capital of the world". Lying on the river Wye, on the English,Welsh border, Hay on Wye is a paradise on earth for a book lover.
When I caught the train from London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads, I was still half asleep at 7 on a saturday morning. For someone who is always excited by travel and new places, what a name to go to. Bristol Temple Meads! Pulling out of Paddington, I was amazed at how similar mega cities look when you are looking at them from a train,be Chennai or Delhi or London. The same concrete structures, the same flyovers, graffiti. The two guys sitting behind me started talking in an unusally loud voice. Then their conversation turned to Star Trek, and one guy said the new Star Trek is not a good re-boot. I wanted to turn back and tell them to shut up. My timidity got the better hold of me, and I turned up the sound on my earphones only to get into a nice slumber. When I woke up, the train was passing through a very beautiful English countryside, which made me miss travel in an Indian train, where you could open the door and sit on the door ledge taking in the cool air as the train hurries towards wherever it is going. I also missed the noises that Indian trains make. Long train journeys in England, I find very boring, sort of like sitting in a comfortable room. No hawkers trying to sell me bread omlette and fresh fruit, no beggars singing film songs, no sounds that trains make when they are changing tracks or crossing a river, not even the gentle sway of an Indian train. Even when British trains approach London, they just arrive. There is no drama like in an Indian train say when it approaches Chennai, or Mumbai, when the train slows down, waits for a signal, and all kinds of local hawkers are running on the tracks beside you, trying to get on the train and the passengers changing from their nightwear or travel wear into more formal clothes for the arrival.
From Bristol I was to catch a train to Newport Gwent, but the train was delayed. On the platform on which the train was to arrive, stood an Asian guy with a bag, and a a pretty Chinese girl with a huge camera. Chinese and their cameras. Like London tube trains the departures board kept changing the arrival time of the train from 10 to 12 to 15 and so on. So I went down into the station concourse, and again felt sorry, as all train station concourses look the same to me in England. The same Burger Kings, Upper Crusts and AMT coffees. Just as I came back onto the platform with my Coconut Hot Chocolate, the train has just arrived, and I boarded it. I went to my reserved seat, and what do I find beside me? The pretty chinese girl. From the expression on her face, I could glean that she thought I was sitting there because I wanted to sit beside her. If you are reading this, that is my reserved seat love! Oh girls! And then she proceeded to take like some 2000 pictures out of the train window in the half an hour it took to reach Newport Gwent.
Newport Gwent was a pleasure. It is the first Welsh station I ever went to. It is very small, and they were making announcements in both English and Welsh.
More to come....
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