Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure

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They then catch the Trans-Mongolian Railway to Beijing, an 11-day journey including stopovers in Irkutsk, Siberia, to visit Lake Baikal (“the deepest, oldest and largest freshwater lake in the world”) and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, which turns out to be something of a disappointment: “The city’s old culture … had collapsed under the might of … KFCs and an Imax. Armed with nothing but a 90-day rail pass, an outdated map, and extraordinary naivety, I had travelled 24,855 miles – the circumference of the Earth – reaching the southern, western, northern and easternmost extremities of India’s railways. Our pseudo-busy, social media-driven lives had shortened our attention spans and tricked us into thinking we had no time for slowness and deliberation. When I’d travelled around India, the plan was to have no plan, which had served me well within the confines of a single country; but this adventure had too many cities, countries and crossings for me to ride by the seat of my pants. Her journey was not without its own adversities, and she encountered perhaps more than her fair share of unpleasant travelling companions.

Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure

This led to her next travel adventure circumnavigating the world on 80 trains, a 45,000-mile adventure. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. On each of the journeys, they engage with their fellow passengers teasing out stories from those travelling with them, sharing food and experiences and always hoping to make the connections to their next train. I am not one of those people, and was rapidly finding the one-month rail pass a hindrance to our travels.

So I took an unplanned and long-winded route via Mannheim and, just before midnight, boarded the 10-hour overnight service to Prague. I like it, though, because it’s as close as I have come to anything vaguely resembling the insanity of Indian Railways in terms of bureaucracy.

Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh – Review Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh – Review

Eighty, I thought, was a nice round number that would make the journey a challenge – but not an impossibility. Sadly, this book is no more than a superficial travel diary blog in book form of one of those travellers who always feels better then everyone else.A lot of the writing is breezy but that's nice in the current portentous day and age, but she sometimes has thoughtful digressions, musings on life, time, etc. Train travel around the world can differ immensely, was there any countries or rail journeys that were a surprise? Alarmed by his suggestion that all he needed for the next seven months was a new pair of boat shoes and a couple of jumpers, I’d taken off his Tag Heuer, handed him a Swatch, and marched him to Blacks for waterproofs and socks. After lunch, we boarded the train to Limoges from where we were continuing the journey to Clermont-Ferrand, then Béziers – one of the longest single lines of track through France, known for the views over the Massif Central.

Monisha Rajesh: Around the world in 80 trains — Dure Magazine Monisha Rajesh: Around the world in 80 trains — Dure Magazine

No doubt there were a number who did subscribe to extremism, and it was a tragedy that the entire community was suffering as a result. Monisha Rajesh may lack some of Theroux’s literary flair, but the reader at least sense that she enjoyed some, or even most, of her journey. elevation with no time to adjusting to altitude – this is frankly, dangerous, and on top of that, the author has been complaining in her book about the bad symptoms. In North Korea] The chance of an uprising was still remote, as the money and power lay with the upper echelons of society, who were quite happy to maintain the status quo so long as it worked in their favor.For the North Korean stint, I had to be there at a certain time because they do the train tour once a year.