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

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we set off in search of anything ancient [in Ulaanbaatar], finding a couple of scrappy Buddhist monasteries, subdued during Soviet rule. It took us a couple of hours in the National Museum of Mongolian History, looking at armor, costumes and jewelry, to gain any sense of the city's old culture..." I really enjoyed China, its a mixture of the best of Japanese trains and more lively trains. They have brand new high-speed trains, with smoking on board and huge dinner parties!

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

So, Monisha is no Paul Theroux, that is a high bar, but this is an engaging enough travelogue. There is a little bit of history thrown in at certain places like Japan and Thailand which really do add to the book. I especially liked the chapter on North Korea. I had no idea that the guided tour allowed such travel by train in that country. You can’t ask any awkward questions, you have to be quiet and be respectful when asking any questions. As a journalist it’s your job to ask questions, to take photos and to find out more, but in North Korea, you can’t. There are many interesting little snippets in the book, like the fact that two streetcars still run in Japan, having survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, or the Quinghai line from Xining to Lhasa, the highest in the world, reaching 5,072m above sea level. Though railway facts are not this book’s main tenet. I loved Monisha Rajesh's Around India in 80 trains, and have been looking forward to reading this one. It can't really be read as a sequel because there's little apart from the author's experience in Indian trains, that gets carried forward to this book.

I learnt, especially don’t take photos of people. It can cause alarm, they don’t know who you are, what you’re going to do with those photos. I’d never thought about that, it’s quite obnoxious sometimes to just take photos of people without asking as you would normally do abroad.

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

While North Korea spins stories, the Western media is just as guilty of indulging its own agenda, painting North Koreans as one-dimensional robots serving their great leader." An epic journey . When I say that I felt almost physically tired at the end of this book, I mean it as a compliment, a testament to its vivid evocations (Country Life) Pet peeves aside this was an interesting enough book. However, it took me a while to work out what was jarring about it. Rajesh is a journalist and this book felt dispassionate and insincere in places. Worst of all, I have no doubt that she was sincere but it came across as a series of journal articles shared with the express view to inform but not alienate, to critique but not completely criticise. As other reviewers have noted too, she complains about the state of the trains when she could clearly afford better - if you don't like it, don't do it; if you want to do it, don't bitch about it. Time and again [in India] I encountered so-called 'godmen' exploiting the poor and vulnerable, priests extracting money for nothing, and blind faith leading to disappointment."With the coronavirus pandemic meaning many people in the UK will staycation this year, do you have any recommendations for train travel in the UK? As a travelling expert, do you have any recommendations on what to bring on a long railway journey? We don’t have that much time in Moscow,’ said Jem, ‘just a couple of days, as we’re taking the Trans-Mongolian to Beijing and it only departs on certain days of the week.’

Around the World in 80 Trains - Bloomsbury Publishing

First things first - why would you write a book about travelling the world by train and not include which trains were caught? Just for the the fun of it, at the end of each chapter, I would have loved to know exactly which trains they'd caught, which number it was on the leg of the journey, the distance travelled and by how many hours. It would have given some interesting structure to a what was essentially a diary, made up of recollections. Pulling out her phone, she began speaking into her Google Translate app before showing me the screen, which now read: What would you like to do?There’s a sense of trust, you’re very open with yourself and your things, and you go to sleep without worrying about your things. We never had any stolen whilst on any of my travels. Rajesh is equally skilled in describing the countless characters she and Jem bump into in Russia and Canada, in Mongolia and North Korea, as well as the no-less-peculiar trains in all of those countries and many more. I can’t get my head around train travel in the UK, the service is terrible, there are always delays. On my recent trip up to the Lake District for the price, all I got was a chocolate bar and a dry sandwich. It’s infuriating that European trains are amazing, British trains have a lot of catching up to do. Around the World in 80 trains is about the author's journey as she sets out to cover 45,000 miles across the World. Monisha records her journey through this book as she explains in detail about the various trains that she took, the food that each place had to offer, the sleeping arrangements, the people and struggles of adjusting to new culture though it was for few days. Monisha and her fiance set off from London and cover Moscow, Asian countries, America, Canada, Kazakhstan and many others. My favourite part was their experience at Moscow which was terrifying to even read. I also thoroughly enjoyed how she explained the sceneries that she witnessed through the windows. One can almost imagine the hues spread across the skies and smell the food that she devoured over the course of her journey.

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

The truth was that I wasn’t sure I’d be fine. In India, I’d been groped on a night train, cornered in a station, chased down a platform, stared at, leered at, spat at, shouted at, sworn at, and spent numerous nights crouched in hotels after dark with my bags piled up against the door. Above all, I didn’t want to leave Jem behind. What a waste it would be, to travel around Europe, Russia, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Canada, and America, with no one to build and share memories. Second, why do books put photo sections mid-sentence. It's a chapter book, surely you could put them between chapters? A lot of Amish people travel on trains, especially around Pennsylvania. It was lovely seeing them interact with non-Amish people, sitting next to people with iPads! For Rajesh, the romance of train travel does indeed live on, “in the passengers who would always tell their story to strangers, offer advice, share their food, and give up their seats”. Unexpected acts of kindness and generosity of spirit create a unique sense of community, “like we are a train family”, as one traveller tells her in Thailand.They begin with a brisk tour of Europe, ending up in Moscow, where they take some nightmarish taxi journeys to find Patriot Park, a “military Disneyland” recently opened by President Putin. 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.” Monisha Rajesh has chosen one of the best ways of seeing the world. Never too fast, never too slow, her journey does what trains do best. Getting to the heart of things. Prepare for a very fine ride (Michael Palin)