I already tried to book the train tickets in Manipal but it was wait-listed, somehow in Chennai these tickets magically appeared and we were able to book them. I was really happy because I was looking forward to go to Kanyakumari the most southern point of India's main land. The man who helped us printed out the tickets. A woman arrived, her appearance was stern, she greeted us and she started to discuss in Tamil with the man who helped us.

Of course we could not understand, but we heard the words: visa, tourists and students. Eventually the woman explained what was going on; we were not considered to be tourists because we are students. We had the wrong visa; those tickets were not meant for us. Even though we look like tourists, are even ignorance as tourists, pay too much for everything like tourists, we did not had the advantage of being a tourist. Frustrated we were, imagine you see the tickets that are available and talked with the man for almost an hour because he needed our details, without any results. The woman said she couldn't help it and didn't want trouble for us and for their selves.

The only thing what we could do is try to get Tatkal tickets, three days in a row. So we had to do a lot more trouble and spend more time to get these train tickets.   After the disappointment we decided to leave to Mahabalipuram. It was a nice quiet village with a lot of stone sculptures. That morning we had to get up early, because we had to search the place where we could get a Tatkal ticket from Villuparam to Trichy the next evening. We found the office near the bus stop and a guy explained us that we needed to be there before 10 o'clock and had to have a copy of our passports. We wrote our names on a list which said we where the sixth ones in the row. After having breakfast we came back, the small office was filled with a lot of people who all wanted a Tatkal ticket. It was a huge chaos and when the counter opened everybody tried to get to the counter.

Our sixth place was gone; we were not prepared for this. Luckily there was one man who got mad, he told everybody to wait for their turn and tried to make a queue in the order of what was written on the paper. It was a good attempt, but it was hard for everybody to wait. Luckily we still got our ticket after a while.  As real Duchies we rented bicycles, we saw a renting place and got so excited. In Holland we always cycle, to school, to bars, to friends, everywhere. So it was nice to be on the bicycle again after two months. We went to the Mandapams, a hill with a lot of rocks. It was a nice place for hiking; you could walk around there and see rock-cut temples and even a lighthouse. We realized we actually didn't need the bicycles anymore and returned them

Article Posted By : prajwal316  On March 17, 2013lView All Articles

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Keywords :
fatigue , fatigue , Manipal