I just returned today after a 10 day vacation for Diwali. Reaaaly away from mails, blogs, code and now I must have a huuge back log and a release tomorrow ;-). Oh, I took Mysore express to reach bangalore, which is a 13 hour overnight train ride from my town to Bangalore. I got seats in the first cabin an air-conditioned coach and there were three other couple on the same cabin. Just in 10-15 minutes after the train started moving, my wife cautioned me of couple of cockroaches and I caught with a tissue and threw them off and the couple opposite to me was smiling at us and I didn’t realize it. Just a few mins later, we happen to see atleast 20-30 cockroaches roaming around the cabin and I now I understood why they laughed and they told me they too caught a couple of them out off the cabin and realised that there were too many to do so. We reached to a point, where we felt there are too many and can’t travel and we complained to the TTR [coach-maintainer] where he called some attender to pour some liquid [doubt, if it is a anti-insect chemical]. Just in a matter of 10 mins, we happen to see few hundreds of them out there of variying sizes coming out of the a/c duct on the first cabin. Sucks… The only weapon we had was a rolled-newspaper with which we hit to kill them that comes towards us and tired of it, me and another couple with a sweet little girl ‘Tanisha’ almost surrendered our tickets and asked for a seating ticket and got one which was the same cabin, but 5feet away from our old one. Still the issue of cockroaches but better. It was almost 12.45 am when I could get a sleeping berth for my wife and around 2am I got one and I almost slept the entire day sleeping :(. WTF Indian Railways [supposed to be big/old org] make it a must to pest-control train compartments. People with kids were always scared of insects roaming around to enter ears or over their heads. Anyways we had nice time that each and every one on my cabin was using that single rolled paper to pass around to hit the cockroaches and other idenifying the ones roaming near them… lots of fun though. Its not scary as ‘Snakes on the plane’ but definitely disgusting
Hm.. I have seen bed bugs and house lizards on the bunks – but hundreds of cockroaches is a bit too much ;-).
With Indian Railway, anything can happen. I once had a reserved birth in an A/C 2 tier compartment, and then after boarding the train, I realized that the birth was non-existent, and in its place was a cupboard which stored all the bed-rolls for the passengers.
The main reason why cockroaches come is: Travellers throw eatables within the train compartment.
The solution you should’ve thought of is:
Take a big piece of sweet, keep it near the toilet and switch off the light near toilet. All cockroaches will go there and you can sleep safely 😉