Monisha Rajesh: Around the world in 80 trains
Interview: Tom Warburton
Monisha is a journalist and travel writer, featuring work in various publications like The Guardian and New York Times.
In 2010, Monisha left the UK to travel across India via train. This led to her next travel adventure circumnavigating the world on 80 trains, a 45,000-mile adventure. We talk with Monisha about her journey around the world in 80 trains.
Photography: Marc Sethi
Your latest book “Around the world in 80 trains” has recently won the Nat Geo book of the year, how did you go about planning such an awesome journey?
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!
I decided it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, so much of the world has railways. I went down to Stanfords Travel and bought myself a huge world map. I chose places I wanted to go, like Tokyo or New Orleans and just put pins in them. I didn’t want to fly, it was unavoidable to Japan and Canada, but we managed to get to London to Singapore purely by train. There was only one issue with Cambodia, there were no running railways across the border.
I don’t like rigid planning, I don’t like timetables and sticking to stuff. I booked the popular journeys, like TransMongolian express, Canada, Japan, once I’ve booked those dates, I was able to come and go as I pleased. That’s the lovely thing about trains, you can be flexible and, that’s something you just can’t do on planes, it gives you the freedom.
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.
Train travel around the world can differ immensely, was there any countries or rail journeys that were a surprise?
Do you know, I did not expect American trains to be run down as they were! I’ve been on trains in Asia that are run down and rickety but that’s part of their charm. I didn’t expect American trains to be as old. There’s a lot of politics surrounding trains in America. A lot of Americans don’t travel by train. It’s an interesting group of people who get on trains. I met runaways, school teachers, estranged dads heading to their daughter’s weddings, people who had lost their driving licences.
A lot of Amish people travel on trains, especially around Pennsylvania. It was lovely seeing them interact with non-Amish people, sitting next to people with iPads!
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!
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.
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.
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!
Trains allow a much more connected experience than other forms of transport, was there any strong encounters with passengers or anyone you met on your journey who stuck out?
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.
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.
Karen, a Canadian, explained a few things that we would never have learnt about. She joined us for dinner, she was lovely, she gave us so much history of Canadian trains. I never knew that Chinese people built the railways as slaves. Also that if anyone comes from the trees they can flag down the train and the train will legally have to stop for them.
She told us so much about the country we wouldn’t have found out about on a plane. On a train sharing some wine and dinner, you create a really quick but intense friendship.
With many journeys lasting several days, you discuss how a train community is formed, what is it with trains that creates this sense?
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!
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.
Also the nice thing about trains, when you’re travelling to A to B, it doesn’t stop what you’re doing. You can do what you want, the journey just happens in the background. People have the freedom to walk around, to work, to chat, and to make friends. On planes people are annoyed, you can’t change seats, you can’t stand up and look outside, everyone wears headphones!
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?
It did, it certainly did when I was in Russia. I got told before I went to Russia, that I would have a bad experience. My black friends in Russia get stopped all the time for no reason or have been arrested. I was so nervous I didn’t plan any travel outside Moscow.
I spent a day heading to the suburbs of Moscow, we got spat at. We turned up at a distant town, people just stared at us, it felt very intimidating. We later read that it said we shouldn’t have travelled on suburban trains.
One of the biggest things is to have more people of colour as travel writers. I’m one of the few brown women travel writers. It’s the experience that they would bring. I had never read about a black person travelling in Russia. A white man will report a completely different thing about how he found Russia to a black man. I’ve been trying to push travel editors into publishing people from not only different races but also trans people and disabled people.
More diverse travel writers would make such a difference with travel and make people more understanding. I was unaware of what it’s like for people to travel on trains with disabilities. Only when people with disabilities started writing to me to ask how certain journeys would be with a disability did I realise. Now I’m conscious of it and ensure I focus on how my experience would be for someone who was disabled.
Languages are very important. We’re really bad in the UK, everywhere we went people were chattering away in different languages, that would never happen in the UK.
North Korea, must have been an odd experience, was there anything that completely threw you about the country?
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.
One book I read was ‘Nothing to Envy’ by Barbara Demick. It’s the story of six defectors, she interviewed hundreds of people, that’s the only way to find information about North Korea. The party pours out the line they want to and tour operators are trying to encourage visitors, so it’s hard to find out what the country is actually like.
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.
It’s a lot harder on a train to shape people’s views, we can see the countryside, we can see people doing normal things. It’s not this bright showcase of people dancing in a square, its normal life and you can see the poverty.
What really shocked me, we had two guides with us, they were chatting to some soldiers. I saw they were so much bigger than the soldiers, you don’t see many people over six foot in North Korea. It’s when I worked out these two guides were the children of diplomats and had grown up abroad. They were bigger because they had not gone through the famine, its the small things that you pick upon
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.
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.
Travelling by train allows you to see a country completely change from suburbs to deserts, was there any journey which landscape stuck out?
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.
Then you get towards Siberia and amazing lakes sweep up to tracks, followed by mountains rising. Next, you hit Mongolia and the Gobi desert and it’s yellow and it’s red. Before long you reach Beijing, which is completely different, it’s amazing to get that in one journey.
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.
As a travelling expert, do you have any recommendations on what to bring on a long railway journey?
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!
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!
You never know what facilities on a train will be like or quite often train canteens can be closed. I’d recommend bringing water, dried fruit and snacks. You never know where you might find provisions next, so always stock up and buy it when it’s available!
A pair of thick socks, it can get pretty cold during the night. Even in the hottest countries, many trains have air conditioning cranked up!
A kindle, I was anti-kindle. However, after returning from my Indian trip, I had so many books, a kindle just made sense!
With the coronavirus pandemic meaning many people in the UK will staycation this year, do you have any recommendations for train travel in the UK?
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.
A few weeks ago I took a train from London to the Lake District, I booked a month in advance it was £300 return for a first-class two-hour ticket, it was still £98 for a standard ticket!
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.
However, one amazing train in the UK is the Glasgow to Mallaig, I think it goes over the Glenfinnan Viaduct which was in Harry Potter!