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

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Great Rail Journeys (01904 734500; greatrail.com) Offers guided tours by rail worldwide, including a number in Britain utilising heritage trains and routes.

Rail travel: Around the world in 80 trains - Telegraph

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.

Rajesh and her fiancé trace Sir Harold’s journey in the book. He comes across as a remarkable character who many years later, invited a remorseful Mikio Kinosh*ta, an engineer with the Japanese Imperial Army to London. Additionally, the encounter with Toshiko Yamasaki, the daughter of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only victim to have survived being at ground zero of both atomic bombs is also thought provoking.

Around the World in 80 Trains Around the World in 80 Trains

Unapproved journalists are not allowed to enter [North Korea] and newspapers regularly preyed upon foolish couples and American students willing to ham up tales of their visit for a tidy fee..." 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. And if you have a fixed itinerary, reservations can be made anywhere from 90 days in advance. But it has its restrictions. I don’t like rigid plans and my best moments have come through serendipitous encounters with other travellers dishing out advice and redirecting me at a moment’s notice. I don’t know what I’m doing next week, let alone in 90 days’ time – and I wouldn’t want it any other way. With a rail pass, though, this presents a few problems. Why do all this by train? For me, flying is expensive and boring, while car journeys are cramped and tedious. Trains, on the other hand, take the traveller into the nooks and crannies of a country and into the heart of its people. They are a microcosm of society, embodying literal class division: in India I could eat hot cornflakes with the ambassador to The Hague in a first-class carriage, then 36 carriages along, sit on wooden slats sharing pears in paper bags with a farmer from Gujarat. On trains I feel free: if I’m late, I can always catch another – and I can carry as much luggage as I like, with liquids in opaque bags. I can eat my own sandwiches, go for a wander, even move seats should I object to my companion. it now dawned on me why long distance train travel held such appeal. No other mode of travel combined my two favourite pastimes: travelling the world and lying in bed. p116Are you sure?’ He stared at the map. ‘There are some pretty hairy places under those pins. Iran? Uzbekistan?’

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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!When Monisha Rajesh announced plans to circumnavigate the globe in eighty train journeys, she was met with wide-eyed disbelief. But it wasn't long before she was carefully plotting a route that would cover 45,000 miles - almost twice the circumference of the earth - coasting along the world's most remarkable railways; from the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet's Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Second, why do books put photo sections mid-sentence. It's a chapter book, surely you could put them between chapters? Ffestiniog Travel (01766 772030; ffestiniogtravel.com) offers up to 30 escorted rail tours a year. Profits help support the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways. 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. 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.”