Monisha records her journey through this book as she explains in detail about the various trains that she took, the food that each place had to offer, the sleeping arrangements, the people and struggles of adjusting to new culture though it was for few days. They then catch the Trans-Mongolian Railway to Beijing, an 11-day journey including stopovers in Irkutsk, Siberia, to visit Lake Baikal (“the deepest, oldest and largest freshwater lake in the world”) and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, which turns out to be something of a disappointment: “The city’s old culture … had collapsed under the might of … KFCs and an Imax.

Prepare for a very fine ride’ Michael PalinFrom the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet’s Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Around the World in 80 Trains is a celebration of the glory of train travel and a witty and irreverent look at the world.They trundle through Europe and into Russia, China, South East Asia, Japan, US, Canada, Kazakhstan and even North Korea. It must also be said that for a book whose title includes “around the world”, Rajesh does skip over quite a lot of the world. Packing up her rucksack - and her fianc�, Jem - Monisha embarks on an unforgettable adventure that will take her from London's St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia and Mongolia, North Korea, Canada, Kazakhstan, and beyond. Born in Norfolk and mostly raised in Yorkshire - with a brief stint in Madras - she currently lives in London with her husband and daughter. You know when you’re travelling and you get stuck talking to that obnoxious person at the backpackers/pub/tour bus who tells you all about how they get absorbed in the culture and they’re not a tourist and it’s all about the authenticity and experience the real (country?

She read French at the University of Leeds and taught English at a high school in Cannes before studying postgraduate journalism at City University London. With their attempt to be spontaneous, their journey gets off to a rocky start of fines and fees that makes her writing about Europe decidedly gloomy.I was expecting this book to be a travel-guide, written by an adventurous woman in her 30s who has travelled around India by trains before and enjoys backpacking. I rarely read travelogues or any book that speaks in-depth of the journeys that the authors undertake. Part of the reason for travelling by train is that there is more opportunity to interact with the people around you, something that you don’t get travelling by car or even in a bus and I’m beginning to think that this is the way to travel. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit.

Unexpected acts of kindness and generosity of spirit create a unique sense of community, “like we are a train family”, as one traveller tells her in Thailand. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. A couple of hawkers started to work their way up the carriage, one selling fish cakes and noodles, the other dragging an ice bucket stacked with cans of Nescafe…A Dutch family swapped a few of their bananas for a couple of my Snickers bars and between us we were managing to forge a pretty decent meal. They begin with a brisk tour of Europe, ending up in Moscow, where they take some nightmarish taxi journeys to find Patriot Park, a “military Disneyland” recently opened by President Putin. In fact, travelling through Tibet and meeting Tibetans on a Chinese train, Rajesh is a little embarrassed by the profuse thanks she is given by Buddhists for “her” country’s protection of the Dalai Lama.These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. While she doesn't go into much detail about this aspect, I would read the book just for her insights and anecdotes about this time. This is a woman who poured her heart and soul in the book, her thoughts are there, good or bad, very realistic, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes sad, but in overal a great book. No doubt there were a number who did subscribe to extremism, and it was a tragedy that the entire community was suffering as a result. I can relate to the hype and the need to not let hype get in the way of one's personal experience of a sight/site, and still being disappointed.

Beginning at the Eurostar terminal they were across to the continent in record time, ready for their onward journey to Moscow. China's cultural Revolution unfolded in the mid-1960s, driving the desecration of almost all of Tibet's monasteries, destroying libraries and paintings. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in train travel - this book is about a truly epic train odyssey! Looking down on typical tourists, people who take pictures, people who don’t feel like socialising, people who haven’t travelled as much, people with different cultures, well. On each of the journeys, they engage with their fellow passengers teasing out stories from those travelling with them, sharing food and experiences and always hoping to make the connections to their next train.Rajesh has a chatty, witty, conversational writing style, coming across as very open and honest from the start, where she shares the discussions she and her fiance Jem had about the trip before deciding to travel together. If a destination is described its mainly about the hotel or restaurant, or about very predictable topics: Visit the Great Wall when you’re in China.