Around the World in 80 Trains

“Two years ago, Monisha Rajesh did exactly what the title of her book suggests,” said Michael Binyon in The Times. Starting at St Pancras, she set off on a 45,000-mile, seven-month journey across three continents (Europe, Asia and North America), travelling almost exclusively by train. Not all her experiences were enjoyable: on the Trans-siberian, she was harassed by drunken Russians; in Vietnam, she was snubbed by Danish tourists; in China, a fellow passenger suggests she try “three squeaks” (a dish of live newborn mice that you pick up with chopsticks, prompting the first squeak, dip in spicy sauce, producing another, and pop in your mouth, producing the third). But the resulting book is a triumph: a “rollicking” account, full of memorable encounters and laced with “wit”.

In Britain, overcrowding, delays and cancellations have fatally undermined our love for the railways, said Christian Wolmar in The Spectator. Rajesh discovered that elsewhere the reverse is more often the problem, that trains in many places are now so good, and so comfortable, that they’re as “unromantic as a night in Milton Keynes”. Thankfully, she still had “numerous fabulous journeys”, with Amtrak in the US proving a particular highlight. (“Americans who have never ridden on their railways have no idea what they are missing,” she writes.) Rajesh is an “elegant” stylist with a winning line in self-deprecation; hers is a “delightful” book. Born in Norfolk to “two Indian doctors whose training sent them all over England”, Rajesh was “perhaps fated to be a traveller”, said Michael Kerr in The Daily Telegraph. She “feels entirely at home” on the rails. In an era of high-speed rail, it’s easy to assume that trains have lost their magic. Her book “triumphantly demonstrates” that they haven’t.