Steve travels to India (and Nepal) and has put up a website about his experience. I liked his post ‘A Strange Planet’ a lot. You can listen to the audio too of his posts.

 I consider it to be a bit of a stretch calling the train a “sleeper” because I got barely any sleep at all! All through the night, the train stopped at different stations about every 45 minutes and vendors clamber aboard shouting as loud as they could! The most common item for sale was “Chai”.  …

If you are ever the houseguest of friends that have traveled in India do this. Get quietly out of bed, one night at about 4:30 am , stand just outside their bedroom door and start shouting “CHAI, CHAI, CHAI” as LOUD as you can. They’ll think its funny and thank you for bringing back many happy memories of their Indian travels.