Travel: On track after a decade
If you believe that the only thing good about travelling is arriving at your destination, you are missing half the fun.
Travelling since childhood, I have used all modes of travel and loved the experiences — be it road, sea, air and train. Not being able to remember making a train journey within Pakistan in the last 10 years, I decided to use it as a good excuse to make a reservation on a train from Karachi to Islamabad, and return a few days later.
I booked a seat on the Green Express train which departs from an exclusive platform across the parking lot of the main Cantonment Railway Station. Traffic outside the Cantt station may have been chaotic, but the platform was certainly cleaner and less crowded than it used to be in the past. Noisy hawkers on the platform, a prominent feature on our railway stations, were conspicuous by their absence.
There’s room for improvement still in Pakistan Railways but at least the trains ran on time
In business class of the Green Express, the six-berth cabin was cool, clean and cosy. White pillows, bed sheets and green blankets were fairly clean, washrooms located at both ends of the bogey had running water as well as toilet rolls. The train moved at its scheduled departure of 10 pm. Shortly afterwards, neatly-packed toiletries in a green packet were duly distributed among the passengers, a television showed three pre-recorded channels: cartoons, Indian movies and some forgettable broadcast. It wasn’t a bad start at all.