Day 19 Part 1 - before dawn. On night trains.

I don't mean to be rude...

But what's the aural equivalent of a trompe l'oeuil?

You know - that way of painting something (e.g. a solid wall) so that it looks like something else (a window).

What would be the aural equivalent when something we hear in reality gives the impression of being something else?

Trompe des oreilles? An aurage (as opposed to a mirage)?

I'm sure I had bought a ticket that told me I was to be sleeping in a railway carriage last night, but my three other co-dormeurs, with their eating etiquette and their snoring, succeeded in creating an incredibly realistic impression that I was actually sleeping in a buffalo byre.

And please don't chastise me for being rude - I (and my beloved partner) have been known on occasion to eat louder than usual and also on occasion (though obviously not the same occasion) snore.

It is natural.

However, this was in a league of it's own.

The counterpoint of their vocal exhalations between the three of them was so well executed, that there was never a hiatus in the soundscape for me to relax and nod off in eight hours. Once.

Now, as a good research student should, and In an attempt to follow in David Attenborough's intrepid global footsteps, I have recorded 3 x 30 second samples of it for further analysis, or posterity, or just for anyone who wishes to hear such an incredible aural feat over eight hours.

Oh - and the super-duper train I was promised by the guide.... What arrived was exactly the same as the other trains I've been on, only two hours late.

What my estimable guide meant was that this train was the mail train and therefore special. Special meaning unique - not better.

So, with the two hour delay, got chatting in the waiting room to a lovely lad from the Punjab (mechanical engineer for an energy company, with a sister living near San Francisco - I didn't know her).

Arrived in Calcutta and the hotel at 9.30am. Whilst being functional, the hotel is so completely functional, it fulfils all travel requirements!

How good is that?!

Laters.