Planes Trains But No Bike

Got up fairly early to find the Enfield repair shop. Although we had adjusted the clutch and it seemed happy, we took the sensible decision to ride two-up on mine just 

in case. A good call because it took us 2 hours to find the place. Firstly, they had recently moved and then, when we had the new address, we discovered that there are two roads called Fourth Cross in Bangalore.

2 hours of riding two-up around Bangalore at rush hour isn't as much fun as it sounds. However, the bike was eventually dropped off and they promised that it would be ready by Saturday closing time.

The next job was to sort some tickets because a plan had been hatched to travel to Chennai by train. Apparently, buying train tickets is a bit of a pantomime in India but seriously, how hard can it be? 

Well, very, as it turns out. We knew which train we wanted and everything about it, so we optimistically approached some chap sitting behind his window. He gave us a form and told us to take it to another building. We did so, where the new chap at the new window told us we needed the window at the end. This differed from all of the other windows because it didn't have a chap sitting behind it. We found out that the chap was due back in 10 minutes so we mooched off for a tactical tea.

On our return, a lady chap was sitting at her window and told us to buy a "waiting list" ticket which would allow us to enter a draw of some kind. Essentially, she was offering to bet us as to whether we would travel or not. Call me OCD if you like but I prefer a degree more certainty in my life so reiterated that we wanted to buy an actual ticket. After much discussion, she finally conceded and we left with our golden ticket. Ganesh alone knows whether the train will run or not but hope springs eternal.

On the way back from the station, we got dropped off at the Science Museum rather than Museum Street but there was an exhibition on so we went in anyway. It was all quite jolly in a Tomorrow's World sort of way and we may have discovered why Carruthers' bike vibrates so much 

Now, we had intended to buy our return ticket in Chennai because we needed a rest from ticket offices, however a casual check of flight times made Carruthers suddenly realise he didn't have enough days left for an overnight in Chennai. Well, we weren't going to waste our hard-won train ticket so we put our thinking hats on, along with the matching drinking trousers. After the second pint of stout, it occurred that internal flights are quite cheap so we could fly back late in the evening thus saving a whole day! Genius... if just a little eccentric. So tomorrow's job is to pop along to Thomas Cook and get some more tickets. How hard can it be?