Few modern writers have championed train travel with as much verve and insight as Monisha Rajesh. Her journeys have covered more than 85,000 miles of track across multiple continents, resulting in numerous acclaimed books on train journeys. While Around India in 80 Trains offered a fresh perspective on a country often buried in cliché, her follow-up Around the World in 80 Trains (winner of National Geographic’s Best Travel Book) proved rail travel remains one of the most revealing ways to understand our world.
Her latest book, Midnight Express: Around the World By Night Train, is out next week and explores the particular romance of sleeper trains — a subject she’s uniquely qualified to explore after spending countless nights on trains around the globe.
Most luxurious train journey you’ve ever taken?
The Belmond Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, which runs once a year between Paris and Portofino. It sets off from Paris Austerlitz in the afternoon and it travels during the evening all the way down to the south of France, it stables in Avignon at 5am then sets off along the French Riviera all the way down to the Italian Riviera, finishing at Portofino. It’s absolutely out of this world.
I know Belmond does do a number of routes, but this particular one between Paris and Portofino is without a doubt the most scenic.
What was your best night train experience?
The Santa Claus Express running between Helsinki and Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland. I was with my children and husband, it was three days before Christmas. The train was a double decker traveling through the snow, there was a lovely big warm dining car on board full of families, it served meatballs and mash and reindeer stew and big pints of ale and people were chatting there until 1am.
It was incredibly fun and the children had a lovely time, they slept well, it’s a smooth ride and the scenery through the darkness was still beautiful because it was pre-Christmas and you could see all the golden lights and people’s houses.
Your worst night train experience?
Probably on the Caledonian Sleeper, from London to Scotland, which I had paid £350 for a double room for and I didn’t sleep. I could just hear wailing all night, breaking lights flashing past the window. It was so awful, just bumping around being slung from side to side so the cost plus the exhaustion by the next morning definitely was one of my worst.
Your favourite dining car in the world?
Mandovi Express in India which runs from Mumbai down to Madgaon. It doesn’t have a dining car per se, but it does have a cooking carriage with the finest chicken lollipops, samosas, biryani, deep fried okra, sent up by hawkers throughout the day, and the food is fresh and hot and delicious.
Best station architecture?
Mumbai CST station, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – it’s one of the most beautiful stations in the world. It looks more like a series of cathedrals put together than a railway hub. Equally, London St Pancras station in a similar vein.
Strangest encounter on a train?
When I met my best friend’s parents on a train in Chandigarh. I had no idea they were even in India and it was while I was doing my first book. I just looked around, saw somebody familiar and then realised it was my friend’s Jane’s parents from Cambridge.
It was the funniest encounter but also the loveliest because it came at a time when I was very sad miserable and missing home, and it was like having a little piece of familiarity there in the middle of the train. I also wasn’t supposed to be on that train so it was doubly serendipitous.
Most profound moment on a train?
On the Burma Death Railway. There’s still a section of track which runs between Bangkok and Namtok, and as we were running over the bridge on the River Kwai, I was thinking how the railway route had been built by Japanese prisoners of war, one of whom had died for every single sleeper laid. It was a very bittersweet moment, because the train is a living memorial to all the people who died.
One place everyone should visit exclusively by train?
India. Indian railways are hands down, the most variable and wonderful and dynamic in the world. There’s a train for everybody there, whether you want luxury, a sleeper train, a narrow gauge train up into the Nilgiri Mountains, there’s something for everybody.
Dream rail journey?
[Rovos Rail], the train in Africa that goes from Pretoria to Victoria Falls. There are quite a few around the continent I haven’t yet experienced, I’m saving them for when I’ve got a good period of time to travel.
City break or rural escape?
City break most of the time, because I like to have food. I like to have a variety of choices. I’m not someone who can just sit still somewhere and stare at nature. I can do that up to a point, maybe a day or two, then I get bored. And I need to be around people and art and bookshops and beautiful architecture.
Three favourite cities in the world right now?
I know it’s cliché, but I still love Paris very much. I absolutely adore exploring on foot, and it’s a city that lends itself very well to that.
I really enjoyed Cusco when I visited last summer. There is so much to explore there. It’s got wonderful food. It has lovely shops and it’s got a very layered history.
And Istanbul – every time I go back, I am constantly surprised by it. It’s like an onion where you can keep on peeling layers and you still don’t ever really get to the heart of it.
City that recently surprised you?
Trondheim, Norway. It’s a beautiful city. It’s small, but it’s the food capital of Norway because of the region it’s surrounded by, the Trøndelag region, has the most incredible fresh produce – dairy farms, microbreweries, lots of independent providers who make apple juice, and they farm everything from that region.
It’s served in all the restaurants, so everything you get is locally sourced and homegrown. It’s a lovely place to travel with children as well, which I recently discovered.
City you keep returning to?
I keep going back to Mumbai. It’s got so much energy and I always feel like I’m coming home every time I’m there, and that’s probably because of the street food. I’m always drawn back to cities for the food, and if the food isn’t great somewhere, that can make me never return again.
But Bombay street food from its keema pav to its vada pav to its bhani puri to kebab rolls, it’s such a wonderful place. It’s always warm and the people are friendly, and it’s got a huge cultural melting pot.
Best city for people watching?
So many capital cities are perfect for that, but I would say again, Paris.
Favourite hidden gems in your home city of London?
My favourite pub is the Holly Bush in Hampstead. You access it through a tiny little alley that goes up around the backs of people’s houses, and it winds around a little rubble set of walls until you get to this beautiful house at the end. It really is a proper hidden gem, you wouldn’t know unless you were told.
One of my favourite restaurants is in Notting Hill, a Palestinian restaurant called Akub, run by a chef from Bethlehem called Fadi Kattan. It’s very special because the ingredients are sourced from Palestinians, he even brings over the salt in his hand luggage when he travels from Bethlehem, used for his chocolate pudding, from one the last families allowed to still harvest salt from the Dead Sea. His alcohol comes from the Christian Taibeh families.
The food is extraordinary elevation, it’s fine dining, but it’s very wonderful traditional Palestinian food crafted and changed into something quite magical.
There’s also the Mercato Mayfair, a food hall in a beautifully restored Grade 1-listed church within St Mark’s Church, and it is not what you’d expect to find in that location.
Your favourite hotel in the world?
L’Hôtel in Paris, on the Left Bank. Oscar Wilde used to stay there when he was in Paris; there’s still a room dedicated to him. It has an amazing private swimming pool downstairs you can book out for an hour with a steam room attached, and nobody else can come in.
It’s so, so private. It has a big curtain across the front of the hotel door, I don’t even really know it’s there. It’s so silent. You wouldn’t know anyone else was staying there when you were there.
Where do you go for total escapism?
Again, India. I keep being drawn back there. It’s difficult to answer differently because it’s such a vast country, and there are so many pockets of calm and total escapism.
I would go to Kerala and sit on a houseboat with nobody more than the chef and the person steering the boat, and travel along the backwaters of Alleppey and spend the night on the waters and come back the next day. Or not come back.
Where do you go for a creative reset?
Onto a train. It doesn’t really matter where it is, but I would get back on a train and just keep riding around, looking out of the window with a cup of tea in hand and my thoughts usually sift themselves out into what I need.
What’s always in your carry-on?
I always take a backpack, with chargers, a power bank, a little wraparound neck pillow because you never know where you’re going to sleep upright, especially on a train. My notebook and a pen, even if I’m not traveling for work. A small toilet roll, because on trains you don’t know when there won’t be any.
When I’m traveling with my children, it’s completely different, it’s full of all sorts of things. UNO cards, colouring pencils, snacks to pull out mid-journey, books, everything. It’s like Mary Poppins’ bag.
Most essential item in your travel kit?
Vaseline. It’s one of the best things when you travel. Great for chapped lips, for dry hands, grazes, stopping bleeding, all sorts of things.
One item you always bring back from my travels?
Books. It’s always books. Every time I travel, I end up in a bookshop and invariably bring home books.
Travel splurge you’ll never regret?
I was in Kars, Turkey, on the far northeastern corner of the country, near the Armenian border. I was there during the Turkish earthquake, an absolutely horrific period to travel. I met this man who was desperately trying to get hold of his family who lived in the south, the whole country was in mourning and he was selling these rugs.
I was looking through his rugs and found one that had the most perfect colouring for my study. I spent about £300 on it and it’s the most beautiful rug I’ve ever owned, the colour is so intense, it’s got the most gorgeous finish. It does remind me of that period of hardship and trauma for the people there, and it was my small way of doing something that would cheer him up.
What are your travel rituals?
I just keep moving depending on where I am and what I’m doing and who I’m with, because I always travel with different people. I absolutely don’t have a routine – I can’t have a routine because that’s not the nature of how I work. To me, if you’re rigid in your planning, it doesn’t lend itself very well to good copy.
Favourite travel authors?
I don’t read very much travel writing and never did, simply because I did not relate to any voices in travel writing, which has largely been dominated by upper middle class white men who would stride off around the world in search of tribes and natives.
So I actually came to travel writing because I wanted to offer the opposite of that. Having said that, one of my favourite books is Shadow City by Taran Khan, about a woman walking Kabul. It’s a very beautiful take on Afghans and their everyday existences, in a way that so many books about Afghanistan absolutely do not.
Also, On the Shadow Tracks by Claire Hammond, about railways in Burma. She’s an investigative journalist who unearthed an extraordinary story about the history of them.
Your next train challenge for a book?
I absolutely have not given that any thought. This is now my fifth book on trains, because I’ve got Untold Railway Stories coming out. I’m not thinking about any more train books right now, I’m just waiting to see what happens with this one.
