Railway Station at Gorakhpur is one of the gateway of educational opportunities for thousands of Nepalese. Nepalese have used this station to reach far away, even beyond India, in pursuit of their higher education. Though I haven’t been on any rail (till date), few of my friends have very fond memories of Indian railway network (starting from Gorakhpur to their Colleges, and vice versa).

After getting out of Gorakhnath Temple, our next stop was Gorakhpur Rail Station. My acquaintances were keener on visiting the station than myself, perhaps they wanted me to see in person how difficult life is. All along the way they were telling me sad stories of the station: about mismanagement, lack of cleanliness, dire life styles of the beggars that will make you cry, etc. Well, though this station has historic significance to Nepalese scholars, but the appalling stories by my acquaintances didn’t make it any pleasant for me to desire a stop there, however I didn’t want to say no to them either.

I had to purchase platform ticket (not the rail ticket) just to enter the platform area. There were no immediate rails arriving/departing so the platform was not crowded. And the station itself was nowhere like what my acquaintances had described; it looked clean and fairly systematic. Even my acquaintances looked very surprised; they hadn’t been here for few years. We found out that Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav had recently visited the station and they had revamped the whole station for his visit. I later read that Lalu is doing wonders to Railway’s in India since he became Railway Minister. I also heard that his model was so successful that some Ivy League Business School in USA sent out some scholars to study that model.

My acquaintances were puzzled by the changed scenario, and I was glad I didn’t have to see anything unpleasant. We were starting to get hungry, so we left off for Ganesh Restaurant (close to famous Golghar, where my acquaintances typically stopped for food) at the city center.

To be continued …….