Gabby charging her phone hour 13 on our sleeper car<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWe were so dedicated to maintaining our disguise as world-class poker players, that we had hardly noticed that a cow had been slowly pacing the length of the platform behind us. \u00a0Ezra had just relinquished his second to last card and was gearing up to claim his fourth victory that evening, when the cow broke through the crowd of Indians and pushed its head into the center of our circle. \u00a0The animal had no interest in the intensity of our game and had been lured to our corner by a bag of pretzels that we carelessly left open in between us. I didn’t realize just how big a cow’s head is, and I was incredibly shaken by the interruption. I threw down my cards and pushed back out of the circle. \u201cHOLY SHIT,\u201d I said. \u00a0No, \u201cHoly cow,\u201d Gabby corrected.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When the train finally arrived and we boarded the third class sleeper car, I was sufficiently buzzed from the wine and remained unbothered by our subpar sleeping arrangements. \u00a0I had never seen a three-tier bunk bed, and I was impressed by how efficiently the train company had utilized the space. \u00a0Rael, Gabby, and I would all sleep on top bunks, and Ezra would sleep the level below. \u00a0Gabby offered to switch with him. \u00a0He was by far the largest person in our group, and it didn’t seem fair that he be stuffed between the top and bottom bunk in the bed that visibly had the least amount of room. \u00a0However, Ezra refused Gabby’s offer, insisting that he wouldn’t be able to see each of us if he was on the top bunk. \u00a0He was flexing his man muscles and protecting his hens from any fox that might try and steal us in the night. \u00a0It was very chivalrous, and whether or not his concerns were valid, his valor made him even more attractive than he had been before.<\/p>\n
We made our bed using the disposable sheets and blankets provided to us by the train company. \u00a0I was about to climb into my bunk when the wine that had finally made its way through my system alerted me that it was time to pee. \u00a0I walked to the back of the train car and found a room that had been falsely labeled as the bathroom. \u00a0I said it was falsely labeled because this room did not satisfy the short list of qualifications that a room necessarily must satisfy in order to be rendered a bathroom. \u00a0There was no sink, no mirror for nose powdering, no toilet paper, \u00a0no trash for sanitary napkins, and most notably, there was no toilet. \u00a0No, this was not a bathroom. \u00a0This was a room with a hole in the ground and a half empty dispenser of hand sanitizer on the wall next to it.
\nI would allow the Indian culture to misunderstand what a Best Western hotel should look like, or what ingredients were required to make something called a veggie burger, but the basic constitution of a bathroom should, in my opinion, be universal. \u00a0When I told Gabby that there was a hole in the floor where our toilet should be, she explained that the public bathrooms in China also didn’t have toilets. \u00a0She said something about how squatting is healthier for the body than sitting is, while performing one’s business in the loo. \u00a0Maybe, I thought to myself, but I bet they have toilets in first class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The wedding would be held in Dehradun, a city tucked away in the northern border of India\u2019s Himalayan Mountains. \u00a0Gaurav\u2019s bride, Neha, and her family lived in Dehradun, and because of its scenic location surrounded by mountains, it was the ideal location for their nuptials. \u00a0Gaurav\u2019s father booked us four tickets on a sleeper-train from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":5114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[16568,16182,16177,16185,5853,16178,21496,16176,16578,16181,16183,16175,16173,16180,2198,7347,16184,7336,16174,16179],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7362,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5112\/revisions\/7362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5112"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}