Around the World in 80 Trains

I read Monisha Rajesh’s earlier travel memoir, Around India in 80 Trains, while planning my own train journey in India. In this one, she circumvents the entire globe (technically more than once in terms of mileage). It’s the kind of book I wish I’d written myself because I would love to do a train journey like this! I love Rajesh’s descriptions of the places she passes through and the people she meets along the way, and of course, how it changes her to see the world through this lens.

A new voice in travel writing also offers a fresh perspective on rail travel – not the usual ruminations of a middle-aged white male (guilty), but the honest, witty, observant reflections of a woman of colour. Rajesh’s seven-month, 45,000-mile journey around the world, starting with the 14.31 from London St Pancras to Paris and ending on the Orient Express, starts off looking for the romance of the rails but turns into something much more valuable – a hard-earned, slow-travel celebration of the planet’s landscapes and peoples. Together with her fiance, Jem, she travels from place to place on a meandering… show more.