from where I left at
/blog/post/2000485This blog continues from where I woke from my 'Kumbhakaran' - ish slumber that is Kondapalli to beautiful city of Vishakhapatnam!
Once again my faithful Samsung Galaxy Core Prime acted as the Camera!
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Now the 12774 was running with a lead of over 15 minutes over it's actual time when I had fallen asleep. When I woke up, it came as quite a shock to see it being delayed by over 33 minutes. I must also mention that the two Nuclear Warheads, 'Little Boy' and 'Fatman' were full awake and running amok throughout the train. Jumping up and down, constantly giggling, catching hold of the Cellphone of a complete stranger, only kids can be this restless...
Meanwhile, just as our train was entering BZA, lunch was served. Now anyone who has known me or seen my previous posts, I have a particular distaste of food, in and around BZA!
BZA is a great station, one of my favourite but the food is exorbitantly expensive and pathetic in taste, not to forget miserable in quantity...
The hawkers and dealers charge huge rates, and that is main reason why I choose to avoid purchasing anything at BZA baring an ocassional Ice-cream or a few Bananas....
The halt at BZA was brief, if I remember correct, we stopped for only about 10 minutes. The loco reversal procedure was completed 'Superfast' in 10 minutes and we set off towards RJY-VSKP side and branched off from the WL-SC lines.......
The next afternoon phase of the journey was relatively sober. The train continued to crawl up and until Eluru, after which some speed-up was observed. Most of the passengers were snoring away to glory, totally oblvious to the beautiful Andhra heartland passing by them...
I had made plans to capture a video recording of the mighty Godavari when we would pass over it, (Which I did anyway and I promise to update it once I have the time)...but the relative boring afternoon phase had made me sleepy once again.....
Only if I could sleep.....
The moment I had decided to close off my eyes and maybe drowse off to another much needed rest, Hiroshima and Nagasaki pounced on me. Now, I had mentioned before that this guys were Bangladeshis, they speak a completely different Bengali dialect when compared to us 'Ghoti Bangalis', hence understanding what they were saying was a struggle...
Anyway their intentions were crystal clear, they wanted to play with my cellphone....My beautiful darling 'Galaxy' set had barely around 25 percent power left, a percentage insufficient to last till the end of the night, and here I was harbouring hopes to capture a video with it .... :(
A denial from my side and 'Little Boy' resorted to the main weaponary in his arsenal, crying! Meanwhile 'Fatman' thought it would be a good idea to wrestle me for the possession of my phone....
Now from a prior experience, I knew that the only people who could stop were their beloved 'Ammi' and 'Abbu' both of whom were snoring away in paradise.....
Reluctantly I gave 'Little boy', the possession of my phone but on condition that they could not take away my phone away from my berth....
As I sat watching them kill my battery by constantly making 'Jack jump over the Subway trains' and seeing all my railfanning ambitions being washed away, I felt miserable......
Fortunately, Divine intervention rescued me :P. My mother called me, and I probably spoke with her for longer than I had for days! My mother was very pleasantly surprised that her son talked to her for so long....however she kept on pestering me whether or not everything was okay :)
By the time I hung up, the train had made an unscheduled halt at Kovvur! Now form Kovvur to Rajahmundry or maybe Godavari there is only a single line available because of the otherwise magnificient 'two-tier top'
Godavari bridge. Godavari was dry...... a massive constrast to the fully swelled up Godavari, that I would observe a week later on my return trip.... I will update the video ASAP and I apologise for not making it available now...
The beautiful city of Rajahmundry lies almost centerly placed between Vijayawada and Vishakhapatnam, and is the largest city and the commercial hub in that region.....
Literally full of beautiful temple it is almost like a spectacle once we enter RJY after crossing the Godavari....
At Rajahmundry our train halted for about 5 mins wherein our train was Xinged with the HWH-CAPE Express....I was quick to snap the train board!
Maybe it was a quick change of crew or maybe the train was injected with steoreids, because no sooner had we left Rajahmundry than our train which was crawling like a tortoise until now, started galloping like a Thompson Gazelle running away with a Cheetah hot on it's heels !!!!!
Samalkot came and was gone in a blink....and believe it or not our train whuch departed 40 mins late from BZA was standing 35 minutes early at Vishakhapatnam outer,waiting for permission to enter the station....
I remember covering this amazing run in my trip report too, never had the speed of this LHB cruiser dropped below 110 in this spectacular run......
We were allowed to enter VSKP 15 minutes later, our train was 15 minutes before time, and I got down to fill up my hungry stomach. On the meantime I managed to capture few snaps of the beautiful VSKP station.....
The halt at VSKP was longer around 30 mins or so and we were departed right time..........
Meanwhile I was wondering whether or not such a spectacular run could be repeated or not..........
I WAS VERY WRONG!
The train reached Santraganchi half an hour before time inspite of being trolled for sometime in ECoR & SER.....
More to follow....Part 3 comes up soon !
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PICTURE ROLL :-
1. 12774 TRAIN BOARD CAPTURED AT VSKP
2. HWH-CAPE SF EXP TB CAPTURED AT RJY
3. SB OF NIDADAVOLU JN CAPTURED WHEN IT WAS BEING SKIPPED.
4. BEAUTIFUL VSKP SKYLINE.
5. DUVVADA SB CAPTURED WHEN SKIPPED BY 12774
6. WAP-7 30300 ATTACHED TO THE DEPARTING GODAVARI EXPRESS.
7. ALCO TWINS STANDING AT VSKP
8. VSKP SB
9. VSKP SKYLINE.
10. WAP-4 22369 BEING ATTACHED TO MY TRAIN, A LINK THAT WOULD CONTINUE TILL SHM.
11. WDG TWINS AT VSKP
12. VSKP STATION SKYLINE
13. ANOTHER SHOT
14. THE WAP-4 BEING ATTACHED TO MY TRAIN....
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