Vanity Fair UK – September 2019

pretending to read, sidling up to families

about to unpack lunch, and feigning ig-

norance as the berths were made up at

bedtime. Through a process of osmosis,

and with relative ease, I began to live

and breathe the passengers’ stories as if

they were my own, all while trundling

through tea plantations to Darjeel-

ing, descending into the guts of Delhi,

skimming the Keralan coast and blasting

through the red dust of Rajasthan.

After returning to London, I turned

my back on the dull sterility of aero-

planes, vowing to travel by train wher-

ever I could...while I still could. Every

few months, I would scroll through yet

another article singing the swansong

of railways, claiming that the romance

was no more and that low-cost airlines

would drive trains into an early grave—

while I was adamant the opposite was

true. Luxury rail services were launch-

ing everywhere from Cusco and Pretoria

to Moscow and Kyushu, catering to our

undeniable, deep-rooted love of slow

travel. But more than that, I knew that

trains must mean something greater to

people all over the world for whom train

travel was not a choice but a necessity—I

just needed to see and hear it for myself.

As a follow-up to my first book, I set

off around the world in 80 trains, pulling

out from London St Pancras on a spring

afternoon with a single rucksack and my

fiancé—solo travel has become a huge

trend, a rite of passage for women in par-

ticular, but I felt no pressure to succumb

to this Western construct. Travel writers

such as William Dalrymple and Geoff

Dyer have often taken wives and girl-

friends on journeys and, besides, most

Asian families rarely travel in anything

fewer than double figures, staring at lone

travellers with a mixture of curiosity and

pity, so I saw no reason why I should em-

bark alone on a trip of a lifetime.

Allergic to strict timetables, I was

thrilled to discover that it was possible to

stay on the rails from London to Saigon, a

concept my mind couldn’t bend to encom-

pass. But after a month-long trail around

Europe, eating paella in Valencia, Sach-

ertorte in Vienna and pork dumplings in

Vilnius, I could feel the destination grow

closer. As we drifted eastward the soup

filled with dumplings, the breads became

boat-shaped and the dialects began to

meld. Embarking upon the Godfather

of Trains—the Trans-Mongolian from

Moscow to Beijing—my sense of distance

TWO IN A BED

Above: a traveller

looks out over the

plains of Tibet, on

the train from

Lhasa to Xi’an.

Left: a sleeping

couple hold hands

as their train enters

Xi’an, the capital

of China’s Shaanxi

Province

FLYING THE FLAG

Right: Tibetan

Buddhist prayer

f lags strung across

the great plains

outside Lhasa

USE YOUR NOODLE

Above: the Great Wall of China at

Badaling, a short train ride from Beijing.

Right: noodles are served from a trolley

at 5,000m altitude; oxygen canisters are

also on offer to treat altitude sickness

VANITY FAIR EN ROUTE SEPTEMBER 2019

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