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

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The trans-Mongolian express! You spend nine days on board, the change in landscapes is amazing! Starting in Moscow in the summer, with no snow you go through four days of leafless beech trees and occasional forests. There was so much humanity with her, we really enjoyed her company, she was getting off before us, and she gave us three little red little strings with symbols of buddhas on the end and nigella seed. Anywhere else you wouldn’t put random things in your mouth! She challenged my preconceptions as well, she had this brand new gold iPhone, she still sends me little emojis of Buddha. The young Uighurs were regularly stopped and asked to hand over their phones for examination, and CCTV cameras above mosques ensured they didn't try to enter to pray." From the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet's Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Around the World in 80 Trains is a celebration of the glory of train travel and a witty and irreverent look at the world. China's cultural Revolution unfolded in the mid-1960s, driving the desecration of almost all of Tibet's monasteries, destroying libraries and paintings."

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

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. It was like listening to C-3PO and Stephen Hawking having the most passive-aggressive argument I’d ever witnessed. Tapping at her watch, Vittoria was not about to budge, and her shop was about to close. Offering a further ten-euro discount, she moved our clothes out of reach, at which point I was ready to explode, knowing that Vittoria had exploited the vulnerability of two foreigners unable to speak her language. Sweating from the steam in the shop and the steam in my ears, I dragged Jem out onto the pavement and went in search of the ATM. Bring a few toiletries, definitely toilet roll, a flannel and always take a small hand soap. It’s funny, I always bring hand sanitiser with me everywhere now! 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. 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?

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Jem’s hands were like ice. He hated dogs, and although I adored them, even I had felt my bowels loosen at the heat and smell of the sniffer dog’s saliva in my face. As the train squealed and began to move on into Russia, the snores from above deepened, and I eventually turned on my side and allowed myself to fall asleep. We’d wanted adventure, and I could tell it was about to begin. 2 A Small World Apart from being a book about travel and experiences, it was also highly informative. She took out time to reach out to the surviving family members of The Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts and has listed in detail about the Japanese technology and traditions including the one with the Geisha. It's fascinating to see so many different cultures that the world has embraced and this book is proof enough that there are wonders in every place that we visit. My only concern was about how daunting this book feels in the initial few chapters. It's only after you get across them, that you'll truly be able to enjoy it. It gives a serious case of wanderlust and what more can you ask for from a book that paints a beautiful picture about traveling? A silk sleeping sheet, it’s great in the winter to keep the cold out and in the summer it keeps you cool. A silk sheet also bundles down into fist size! A kindle, I was anti-kindle. However, after returning from my Indian trip, I had so many books, a kindle just made sense!

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

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! Before leaving London, she had interviewed Sir Harold Atcherley, a surviving POW (he has since died) who had recently played host to one of his old foes because “you can’t go on hating people”. Atcherley told her that “equal proportions of good, indifferent and lousy people exist in any group, any country”. In Hiroshima, she times her arrival for memorial services marking the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb, and seeks out 81-year-old Tetsushi Yonezawa, who tells her: “If I had stayed in Hiroshima, I would have died. These trains saved my life.” Second, why do books put photo sections mid-sentence. It's a chapter book, surely you could put them between chapters? I was surprised by Japan, I didn’t expect there to not be any overnight journeys. There is only one overnight journey left in Japan.

Because trains have this microcosm of society on board. You have a train family in your carriage, you’re in such close proximity with strangers. If you don’t get on with people, you’re in for a miserable experience! I had put this trip off, I felt like I couldn’t do it one book, no one had done an around the world train trip before! Book Genre: Adventure, Autobiography, Biography, Biography Memoir, British Literature, European Literature, Memoir, Nonfiction, Railways, Trains, Travel, Travelogue Another thing I did, there were several events that I wanted to cover. It was the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and the 70th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean “Worker’s Party of Korea” (the ruling party of North Korea). So for certain dates, I had to be in certain countries. For the North Korean stint, I had to be there at a certain time because they do the train tour once a year. 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.

Book review: ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’ by Monisha

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. Two of her most powerful passages are from Thailand and Japan: the first on the Burma-Siam Railway – better known now as “the Death Railway” because it was built by prisoners of war and Asian labourers for the Japanese – and the second on Hiroshima, a few of whose residents survived the immediate after-effects of the atom bomb of August 1945 by fleeing on trains. In each case, she arrives well-briefed.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.

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

You talk a lot about the difficulties in travelling in areas that aren’t diverse or as accepting of other cultures, did that affect how you travelled, and how do you feel we can break down the barriers in travel? Belmond (0845 0772 222; belmond.com) Upmarket tours by private trains such as the Northern Belle and British Pullman. A relentlessly curious and wonderfully descriptive writer . [Rajesh] offers us a never-ending series of Theroux-esque, quirky anecdotes . Remarkably engaging . If you fancy learning about global travel in the relative slow lane, try boarding this carriage and staring out the window - here you can view the world through Rajesh's eyes, as she takes us on a lazy, time-bending meander in search of authenticity and humanity ( Geographical) Planet Rail (01347 811810; planetrail.co.uk) organises first-class railway holidays in Europe (and on the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express). Most of its holidays are tailor-made. Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure’ by Monisha Rajesh is published by Bloomsbury,

Monisha Rajesh makes every country and their attractions sound so appealing. I would never even think about travelling to Tibet or North Korea. I would like to visit these countries because of her descriptive writing. There is the Potala palace in Tibet. This palace contains the Dalai Lama's throne. Tibet also has many butter sculptures made by monks. I think this would be interesting to see. I would love to see all of these things in person. I would love to visit Pyongyang to attend a film festival. I love eating new dishes. I would love to try the yak curry in Tibet. I would even try the cumin bread that is available on the silk road in Asia. Rajesh, born in Norfolk in 1982, the daughter of two Indian doctors whose training sent them all over England, was perhaps fated to be a traveller. For her debut, Around India in 80 Trains (2012), a journey she finished alone after falling out with her companion, she endured harassment that’s inadequately described on the subcontinent as “Eve-teasing”. So many things, all the time! North Korea was the one place I could have read lots about and equally read nothing about and still learnt loads. The author is very biased and has very strong opinions which makes the book a bit spoilt. I would have expected her to be a bit more experienced, but yet she falls in the usual typical tourist traps (which I was hoping wouldn’t be covered in this book) – not doing the research about places, being overcharged by a taxi driver who didn’t set the meter, expecting Chinese people to speak English and hoping it would be easy to navigate and instead spending time in Beijing shopping for cardigans in Zara. If reading this makes you feel upset, the book isn’t for you. 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."