A trip of a life time that could potentially take your life as well but a one not to miss in your life.. Thats how i would describe it. PK acts as the drama king by telling everyone except my dear pal and partner in crime for most RF trips MSN.. Office pressure was there but then the real intent was not leave others and myself disappointed by dropping out at the last moment. MSn and me decided that we would take Island - Blue Mountain Combo and on a friday night in Island how the hell do we get tickets? I checked KJM to SA in Island and surprisingly there were 2 tickets available in Sleeper. As usual thinking of usual allotment by IR i thought we would get some crappy berths for the 4 hour journey, and came the first surprise.. on payment we were allotted two side lower...
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berth that too ones with emergency windows.. What else do railfans need even if the journey is in the night... The day of the trip arrived and i set out to KJM discussing with MSN as to how to escape from the eyes of PKV for he was boarding the train at the same station and one coach next to ours.. Somehow conned him and saw him boarding S6 and i sneaked into S7.. Surprises did not stop.. A never ever seen rampage was found with Island doing MPS through out the journey and slowing down only at caution areas. For a moment we thought if we had boarded a wrong train. By then there were no more surprises needed and i appeared in front of PKV.. All 3 of us now were chatting and spending our time. PKV went to sleep as he was supposed to be getting down at CBE and catching blue mountain. Island was looped into Tirupattur and the legend TVC Mail overtook us at full MPS... within a minute island was cleared off and we set out to our destination Salem.. PKV now reappeared and said he would deboard at salem along with us and then come in Blue Mountain along with us. His excuse was that he was not getting sleep.. but the real reason is known to MSN and myself only.. ( Not to be disclosed :) ) . The train reached salem on PF1 15 mins late and we headed straight out for some food which was readily available outside the station... We had about 1.5 hours to spend before boarding Blue mountain.. We took an unreserved ticket with highest confidence that it can be converted to a 3A. Blue came into PF1 around 2.15 Am. MSN got into his B1 and PKV / myself got into my B4. B4 was pretty much empty and you could choose your own berth to sleep .. PKV settled into a Side lower and me into my assigned LB. Before i could get into a siesta, i searched for the TTE and failed to See him in all the 3 AC classes. i slept off and suddenly a TTE woke me up to check the tickets. post checking requested him to provide the conversion for PKV and he readily did that for us.. and when i woke up it was MTP.. The epic trek to NMR was soon to begin.. To be Contd..... (hopefully)....