An excerpt from my journal I kept while travelling in India:

Today we left Agra and the Taj behind to move onwards towards Chanderi, this teeny little town about a 5 hour train ride, followed by a 3 hour jeep ride away. After leaving the hotel, we hit up our usual mode of transport, vikrams, and headed to the train station for our 5 hour journey. Ive been sitting in my seat for like 30 minutes, and my toosh is already sweaty and hurting. Damn vinyl seats. Whoever thought vinyl seats, plus 100 degrees everyday would make for a good plan for public transport? Hmm? I wish someone would tell me so i could go and sweat on him.
Sweating may actually be my new super power. That and getting insect bites.
But, back to actually making our way onto the train. After arriving at one of the most congested train stations Ive ever been to, we ran, literally full on olympic style sprinting, to get onto this train, because we were late to the station. My group then leapt on what we thought was the correct train to find a family already occupying our seats. So Vinit, our guide, went ahead to find a ticket collector and see what was up.
Anyways, I looked up, only a second later, and only half of our group was still smushed in this over crowded, and fully taken (seat wise, at least) car. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE was staring at us. I've never had more eyeballs boring into my sweaty self EVER in my life. It was a little unnerving. There were 5 of us left, blocking the aisle of the train, standing there awkwardly for a few minutes, when one of my companions looks out the window onto the platform and sees our guide, with his bag in tow, running AWAY from the platform. The train begins to move, and I am in the first stages of having a real panic attack. I mean, I had travel "companions", but honestly, I had just met them the day before, and was essentially alone, literally on the other side of the globe. I began to think happy thoughts of grilled cheese and puppies, and calmed myself down :) We were still waiting, on this moving train, in a compartment full of Indians who are staring at us like we're martians or something, and we have no idea where we are going. We dont speak Hindi, we dont have any money or tickets, or any idea of what we are about to get ourselves into. We dont even know if we are on the right train. So, we just stand there. Sweating and awkward. The ticket collector comes by and, horribly, we try and explain that we have no idea what we are doing. At this point, one of my companions, who had left about 15 minutes earlier to search the train for anyone who we may recognize or may speak English, comes back with a panting Vinit, who is covered in so much sweat from running around and searching for us, that he looks like he's been playing in a downpour.

Apparently we were in the wrong compartment.

After this little accident of jumping onto the wrong compartment on my second day in India, following a bunch of other India "novices", I realized that to travel in this country, you not only needed a huge amount of patience, but a HUGE sense of humour. And a toleration of sweaty vinyl seats. :)

Needless to say, we didnt let ourselves get lost again. BUT, by now, we were ok with the fact that we might. :)