Around the World in 80 Trains (Monisha Rajesh)

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

 

A very interesting journey by a journalist and her fiance around the world by train covering some of the harder to reach places such as North Korea and Tibet. It's a great account of train travel with an obvious love for it and the insights it gives into local lives which you don't get travelling by plane or car. Brings the romance, and hardships, of train travel to life. It may have been around the world but it's the northern hemisphere and misses out South America (which to be fair has very few working railways), Africa (I have no idea about whether there are rail networks there), India (but see her previous book) and west of India (I think train travel difficult there too). That's nitpicking on my part though. Monisha certainly has an empathy with the people she meets and is stoic in her handling of difficult situations. It wasn't a book I couldn't put down but was great to dip into for a few hours at a time then leave for a while which I guess shows that Monisha's descriptions of herself and Jem stuck in my mind.