Overnight train to HyderabadA means of torture

The following is an extract from the travel book A River of Life: Travels through Modern India.

The journey to Hyderabad is a long one, my longest to date in fact, twenty one hours. Tack on the three hours it took me to get from my guesthouse in Puri to Bhubaneswar Station and you have a whole day. To say it is the most gruelling day's travel I have ever known would be something of a bland statement, uncoloured as it would be by memories of other unsavoury journeys I have taken in the past. To qualify it somewhat, let me just say that, if hell exists, then there is a second-class Indian train carriage somewhere within it, constantly moving. There is nothing to see through the windows - that version exists in a more heavenly domain - there is just the carriage, a moving torture rack, inflicting pain on every muscle in strict rotation. The buttocks are the first to suffer. The back and neck muscles last a little longer, before they begin to stiffen, turn to steel, sharpened on the whetstone of inactivity and pricking you with pain. The calves cramp up soon after, because you can't get down and stretch your legs on the train in hell, just as you rarely dare to on the ones in India, especially if you are travelling alone, only leaving the carriage at a given halt if you are particularly desperate, knowing there is every danger of not making it through the scrum in the doorway as the train inches forward, your relief at getting back aboard turning to dismay as you find a family of squatters occupying the seat that had previously been yours alone. When darkness comes you haul your aching body onto the designated bunk and heave a sigh. The lights go out. The train clatters on, the sun edges up, and you wake, to find that every muscle in your body has been turned to rope, that some crafty demon, in the dead of night, has tied up in thick knots. My physique doesn't help, lean and bony as I am, lacking the natural padding of a larger man; but there are few who would deny that my overnight journey to Hyderabad is punishment of the highest order. If and when my misdeeds finally catch up with me, and St. Peter turns me away from those pearly gates, I fully expect to find myself back in the second-class compartment of an Indian train, minus the scenery, travelling on and on and on....