On the Second Class Sleeper train from Varanasi to New Delhi, there are five of us foreigners here in a set of six bunk beds. Our motley crew consists of two French, one Korean, two Australians, topped off by one longsuffering Indian guy. I think he would have liked to go to bed long ago, but the French couple resolutely refuse to put down their middle-tier bunks, meaning tht we're all held captive to their whim. All six of us are sitting bolt upright on Andew's and my bottom-tier bunks, like naughty Catholic schoolkids waiting to meet our Very Scary Headmistress.

Locals innocently wait to board; strange foreigners lurk behind them and take photos of their backs.

What I can't help noticing is how different our attitudes to this train journey are from those of everyone else around us.

The Korean backpacker makes his escape early. Just like the two lovely Korean women on our last train journey, he climbs up ono his top bunk pronto and immediately tries to sleep. On both ocassions, none of the Koreans ever climbed down again until morning - iron-clad bladders indeed!

Back at ground level, the rest of us foreigners are in a lather. Andrew and I feverishly work our way through a series of travel literature bighitters and potboilers we've brought with us: The Lady and the Monk (him); Bangkok 8 (me); and The Map of Love (to be fought over).

The French, meanwhile, have brought aboard an ENTIRE BOOK of logic problems (interspersed with the occasional crossword or langauge game), which they diligently work away at, emitting little cries of encouragement to each other as they go:

Bien.
Oui!
Bien.
Oui!
Bien.
Oui!
Bien.
Oui!

It's like sitting courtside to a particularly dull tennis match.

Having finished Bangkok 8, I can't just sit there and so must dig around immediately for our iPod and its extra battery pack (its main battery being dead already). Drew ploughs on through the last few pages of Pico Iyer, the French continue to out-logic the cabin, and the four of us look utterly crazed.

I realise with some embarassment that our little coeterie looks like a team of wannabe-Mensa-ites, champing at the bit to prepare for the biggest IQ test of our lives.

Our Indian carriage companions look bemused.

Key behaviours here for the traveller include dozing, lying supine staring into space, and consuming in quantity the delicious morsels you prepared for the journey.

I catch sideways glances at our weird behaviour that suggest what we're doing is on the same level as trying to bathe a group of poodles in a public sauna, or attempting to lox a salmon whilst doing yoga.

You're on a train - just relax and accept it goes one line of thought.

My God! You're on a train! Quick - distract yourselves! goes ours ...

Quick! Distract yourself with literature!