A great track record

Monisha Rajesh wrote lovingly about the Indian railways in her previous book, Around India in 80 Trains; but her new one set her wondering whether the train journey had lost its allure elsewhere — for which there is a strong case to be made in Britain, at least. The constant outpouring of anger in the media about the horrors of modern travel seems to have captured the public mood: the delays, the cancellations, the overcrowding, the fatuous announcements, the garish logos of the privatised companies and the overspending on major projects all seem set to undermine our love of the railways.

Rajesh, however, muses that the greater threat might in fact come from an unexpected direction — that the trains are now too good. She points out that the railways have improved so much with the scrapping of draughty carriages, the smoothness of the ride brought about by the loss of the familiar tagadada tagadada, thanks to continuous welded rails, and the advent of high-speed trains in many countries across the world that they have become as unromantic as a night in Milton Keynes.

Rajesh sets out to test her concerns by journeying across the world by rail, covering 45,000 miles in 80 trains over an eight-month period. She drags along her boyfriend Jem, now her husband, as an afterthought, having decided, belatedly but wisely, that some of the more exotic countries she visits may not be safe territory for a lone woman, particularly a brown-skinned one.

She starts with a few routine runs around Europe. Quickly bored, she makes for Asia via the Trans-Mongolian Railway to Beijing, then heads to Japan and finds herself on the Death Railway, the line built by prisoners of war in Burma at the cost of thousands of lives.