I’m headed north to a new state today. I didn’t quite wake up as early as I had planned since I was feeling a little sick. Luckily I didn’t feel sick for too long. I missed the 7AM bus I needed, so instead I had to take a lot of connections. Two buses to get to Bijapur first. Passing through this city, I noticed an old city wall and lots of Islamic style ruins throughout the city, since it was a capital of a kingdom a few hundred years back. I found a cyber cafe mentioned in my book and started looking up flights for after India.
I took one more bus and this crossed the border into the state of Maharashtra, the richest state in India. I noticed the letters on all the signs changed because they use a different script here and another whole language called Marathi. On the way, I noticed a caravan of ox driven carts where nomadic families seemed to be moving. I was thinking you’d see this 150 years ago in the United States, but still going on here.
I arrived at the railway station in the city of Solapur, a city known for textiles. My goal was to get a train ticket for the next morning. I found the reservation office, got a reservation form, filled it out and waited in a seat. I had to wait for my number to get called, so it was very orderly and I got my ticket.
Next, I tried to find a place to sleep. First I tried inside the train station, which had some beds. It was full. I tried across the street, they were full. For the next hour or so I started walking through the city trying to find a place that wasn’t full and it was getting dark. I knew I could sit in the train station all night for the worst case. I found a big hotel when it finally got dark and they had a room for me. A tiring day.