We're in India right now and on Sunday night we went to a Delhi train station to catch an overnight train to Dharamsala, a hill station in the north. On hindsight, I don’t know if it was the main station. I just recall it being labeled the Old Delhi station.

It was a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Hundreds of people were sleeping on the platforms, some huddled on dirty old blankets. That much was to be expected. What caught us by surprise was the brutality with which policemen patrolling the platform suddenly used on a couple of poor people.

I couldn’t understand a word as they shouted in Hindi. One civilian appeared to be accusing the two of something. The policemen would occasionally punch and slap the head of the so-called miscreants. One had a cane and started beating the legs of one of the victims. In self-defense, he grabbed the cane and threw it on to the tracks.

That drew our attention to the tracks. They were alive with big fat rats. There were at least a dozen running along – a few feet below the people sleeping on the platform.

The train itself looked so grungy my wife would only get on at my urging. It was dimly lit and a poor cousin to the soft sleepers of China. What was most surprising was how passengers who boarded chained up their briefcases and suitcases to special clamps to deter the robbers who apparently roam the trains. We slept atop our respective suitcases. The Sikh who was on an adjacent bunk tried to hearten us, saying he didn’t think it so likely that we’d be targeted by robbers.

We arrived in Dharamsala, which sits more than 5,000 feet in the Himalayan foothills, and is surrounded by lovely pine forests. It’s a peaceful place, with clean air and without the dust of New Delhi.

I discovered one drawback – dogs – that made me think of a recent visit I had to a physician in Beijing who urged me to get a rabies vaccination for China. I dismissed the notion. As I was walking back to the hotel last night, three large dogs started snapping at me and lunging at my legs. I swung my camera bag and hit one on the snout. Luckily, the dogs stayed back as I inched backward up a hill to a gate to the hotel.

A local newsletter I read this morning had the headline: Beware of Rabies in Dharamsala Region. It noted that there were four reported rabies deaths in this region in the first two weeks of October. It also said a person dies of rabies every half hour in India, with a toll of over 30,000 fatalities a year.

Rabies may exist in rural China but I don’t think it’s as rampant as in India.