My 2nd travel blog after 20821 travel blog:
So dear friends posting my 2nd blog of travel undertaken by 12222 from Howrah to Pune.
Day 1:
My ticket was already confirmed whilst booking from IRCTC but had got Upper Berth in 2AC in spite of selecting SL while doing the bookings.Anyways IRCTC has its own algorithms for seat allocations but our algorithms of changing...
more... seats with our co passengers can even beat IRCTC algorithms.I had this idea in mind of changing seats within our co passengers if it doesn't work then i had to occupy my upper berth only which was allotted.
Reached station by 7.30 am and then enjoyed fresh tea in mitti ka kulhaar which is to be found only in that side of India. After having tea, saw that the platform was still not allotted for 12222, so out of my hunch started walking towards platform 22 and was waiting a bit towards the entrance and then heard that 12222 will depart from platform no. 21. so wrong intuition.Started to walk towards platform 21 and thinking that 2nd AC will be the coaches at the start of the train, so had walked quite a bit towards Mumbai side, but when the train was placed on the platform found my coach to be the last one towards howrah. 2nd time wrong intuition.Again went back and boarded my A3(2nd AC ) coach. It was duronto livery of 2012 made but with the condition of the coached one could make out that it could be very old, with no buttons on reading lamps, no charging points on the SL berths, fixtures were dangling from their originating parts. Anyways kept my luggage on my upper berth and was waiting for TC to come so that seats could have been changed.Found the coach attendant with the occupancy list and what i saw was only 20 seats out of 56 odd seats were booked..rest the entire coach was empty. I asked the attendant to give me any SL seat which he readily gave me.I happily shifted my luggage underneath my allotted seat and sat merrily waiting for train to start.
Sharp at 8.20 am with a shrilling honk SRC P7 started moving out taking our train to the western side of India.Choice of food orders were taken as for me it was all non veg throughout the journey.Newspapers and water bottles were distributed. Our train eventually picked up speed as soon as santragachi shed passed although with jerks which was quite evident during acceleration and deacceleration tht CBC couplers were not fixed yet on these coaches.I was enjoying my view outside as it was sunny and the suburbans trains and stations were passing in a whiff.Breakfast was served just before kharagpur and till this time the train had maintained its speed and schedule only to slow down while passing kharagpur station.After passing kharagpur the train again picked up speed and was moving steadily towards its first halt at Tatanagar at 11.30 am.
The first halt Tatanagar comes sharp at 11.30 am which means that the train is well on its schedule.After a 10 min halt and again the customary jerk we move out of Tatanagar ready to enter the state of Odisha. None of the stations of Odisha be it Rourkela, Jharsugda has any halts for this train.So it skipped all of them and next halt would be Bilaspur which falls in Chattisgarh state.Meanwhile lunch was served at usual time skipping the soup as it has been discontinued except 1A class. Even the sweet dish from the lunch and dinner menu is discontinued.after having a good lunch I decided to take a small nap which ended at 4.00. Tea packets were given and I thought of having black tea keeping the milk sachet aside. Bilaspur was dot on at 5.30 pm. After a brief 10 min halt and with jerk, we started our journey for our next halt at Nagpur(my residence state of Maharashtra).Dinner was served by 8.00 am and while having dinner was watching the illuminated pathway of famous Dongargarh temple through my window.After having dinner and customary vanilla ice cream it was to hit the bed.
Day 2:
Woke up 5.30 am while the train had maintained its good speed, Manmad came sharp at 6.00 am which means it was in its scheduled time. Morning tea was served after the train departed Manmad without any reversal as the entire route is now electrified. Breakfast was served somewhere between 8.30 am and till now the train was going in decent speed in spite of single line route only to stop at belwandi to give way to one speeding train which I missed reading.Daund came sharp at 10 am but with the loco reversal and customary testing of loco attachments it left at 10.30 am. Could see the bypass line fully ready but the station/platform work was in progress and was far from complete.
Yavat, Loni, Uruli passed in a jiffy only to slow down in Hadapsar and continued the same slowed down momentum till Pune station.Arrived Pune station with a delay of 15 minutes and was placed in platform 1 for de- boarding.
