Vittoria listened to the deadpan automated voice, and smirked, throwing both hands in the air before speaking into the app. Travelling on US trains is very eye-opening, you also learn a lot about the economy, life and politics. The US has such a large divide in class and wealth and it’s an amazing way to learn about it!

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

Ffestiniog Travel (01766 772030; ffestiniogtravel.com) offers up to 30 escorted rail tours a year. Profits help support the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways. 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." What’s amazing about train journeys, you see people facial figures change you see we’re not very different to people. When you airlift out of one place to another there’s a sense of difference, but with trains, you can see how connected we are. Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure’ by Monisha Rajesh is published by Bloomsbury, She glimpses an enthralling swirl of cultures and landscapes on a journey filled with memorable brief encounters: “Trains are rolling libraries of information, and all it takes is to reach out to passengers to bind together their tales.”

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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 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. But it was better to come and leave disappointed, than not to have come and be disappointed, imagining I'd missed something being disappointed about. p273 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. The trains in Japan are so quiet, there’s very little energy on Japanese trains. They’re very mindful of other people, and they’re very clean and too perfect, a little dull to be honest.

Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh | Waterstones

Rajesh is certainly in possession of a rare writer’s gift comparable to that of a good actor who can read the phone book and still make it sound exciting for the audience. As she rattles along through countries and continents, her attention to detail is astonishing. She is also as smart as a whip and doesn’t take no for an answer. Around The World in 80 Trains. Great insights into the many amazing train journeys that can be had. I really enjoyed reading it, and felt like I was taking the same adventures as Monisha and Jem. Hope to follow in their footsteps and go on some of these epic train experiences. ? Read more 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”. 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. I learned a lot about different trains. The fastest train in the world is in Beijing. The top speed of this train is 268 miles per hour. It would be an amazing experience for me to travel that fast. I learned there is a train called the Reunification Express in Vietnam. It goes from Hanoi to Saigon in Vietnam. I never even knew that train travel is available in Vietnam. I would love to ride on the Venice Orient Express. It travels through Italy and all of Europe . I would love to see the Dolomite mountains in Italy while riding on this train.Safer? Not always. While she’s with Jem on a commuter service outside Moscow, two men spit at her legs; on the Trans-Mongolian, while Jem is elsewhere, the provodnik (guard) rescues her from a groper. Then there’s an additional danger for a writer: that travelling in company means travelling in a bubble. One of her predecessors on the long-distance train, Paul Theroux, has said firmly (in The Old Patagonian Express) that “to see, to examine, to assess, you have to be alone and unencumbered”. Not necessarily. You just leave the fiancé buried in a book, and seize every chance to chat up the locals. Train travel around the world can differ immensely, was there any countries or rail journeys that were a surprise? As a fan of travel memoirs, I enjoyed this book and feel inspired to try some train travel myself. having not read Around India in 80 Trains, I would have like to hear more about how the author developed this passion for railways. Also, I found it puzzling that South America and Africa were neglected. Are there future books in the making? If so, I hope she includes a map for the next adventure. Read more

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

What makes the book is [Rajesh's] wit, astute observations and willingness to try everything ... She arrived at St Pancras, on time, tired and triumphant. Her riveting account of the odyssey leaves us feeling the same Great Rail Journeys (01904 734500; greatrail.com) Offers guided tours by rail worldwide, including a number in Britain utilising heritage trains and routes. 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." The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our Rajesh and her boyfriend Jem set out from London to travel around the world visiting many diverse places, including France, Italy and other European countries, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Canada, the USA, North Korea and Kazakhstan. Along the way Rajesh describes the interesting encounters she has with the people they meet.

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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. 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. Leaning out of doorways, perching on steps and sleeping in the odd linen cupboard, I covered the length and breadth of the country in four months and was drawn into its warm embrace by the whole railway family – from her royal highness the Deccan Queen and the sleek and chic Durontos, to the puffing and panting toy trains and thundering Rajdhanis. I hung from the badly behaved Mumbai commuters, had sweet dreams in the Indian Maharaja’s double bed, and witnessed orthopaedic surgery on the world’s first hospital train. 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

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

Are you sure?’ He stared at the map. ‘There are some pretty hairy places under those pins. Iran? Uzbekistan?’ There’s three or four I still think about, a Tibetan nun from Xinjiang Province in China. She was very fun, there was three of us at this point, we were working and she just appeared with a big beaming smile and started jabbering at me. I had no idea what she was staying, she was so animated and laughing, it turned out she wanted to know if I was Indian, I’m a British Indian. She wanted to thank me as the Dalai Lama lives in India, and she wanted to thank me as India has looked after him. I didn’t want to get a preformed view in my head and not allow the country to open up. I was there for around ten days and took a charter train to several cities and the coast. No way, I’m not letting this woman fleece us. Tell her she can keep our crap. In fact, it would probably cost less than that to replace it all at H&M.’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. 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. Rajesh and her fiancé trace Sir Harold’s journey in the book. He comes across as a remarkable character who many years later, invited a remorseful Mikio Kinosh*ta, an engineer with the Japanese Imperial Army to London. Additionally, the encounter with Toshiko Yamasaki, the daughter of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only victim to have survived being at ground zero of both atomic bombs is also thought provoking. I haven’t done a lot of train travel in the UK they’re a bit crap! I think some of the UK trains are some of the worse in the world, they’re prohibitively expensive. As a travelling expert, do you have any recommendations on what to bring on a long railway journey?