Monisha Rajesh

I acquired this book a few months back in a book swap event held in work to mark World Book Day. My theory with book swaps is that no one wants to give up their favourite books, but by the same token don't want to offer up something terrible either, and I think that sums up this book; it's not the best book I'll read this year, but it's not the worst either.

Rajesh (at the time of writing this book) was a young British journalist who had previously written a book about travelling around India by train. This time she had set the bar higher and planned to travel the world by train, along with her fiancé.

It's a book that I found page-turning and irritating in equal measures. No, that's untrue - the page-turning elements definitely outweighed the annoying bits, but somehow the annoying bits stuck. The best parts of the book were her descriptions of travel through North Korea and Tibet (particularly the former), where she described well what they saw out and about on their travels, but in other parts of the book there were gaps that I found frustrating. Perhaps it was that some places gave more material to talk about than others, or that she felt more predisposed to talk about the destinations that interested her most, but at times the focus was so much on the trains that I felt cheated out of hearing more about the countries they were travelling through. Perhaps that is the reality of rail travel, with long distances on trains meaning that you're simply passing through places that are simply a blur through the window. When they travelled long distances through Russia, she had tales about some of their fellow passengers, but those sections suffered in comparison with other travel books for a lack of 'on the ground' descriptions. Similarly, she whipped through the USA at a speed of knots with just passing mentions of cities travelled through, which began to feel like the project was a train-counting tick box exercise.

I also wrinkled my nose in annoyance when, at various times, Rajesh negatively commented on tourists in that smug I'm-a-seasoned-traveller-not-a-tourist annoying way gap-year students have of boring you. At other times, realising that she couldn't pass off a certain day trip here or there as anything other than a tourist jaunt, she then decided she was a tourist after all and positively eye-rolled on the page about middle-aged single men on sabbaticals classing themselves as travellers rather than tourists.

I've never travelled more than a few hours on a train, and Rajesh's book didn't warm me to planning any overnight trips any time soon (sleeping in a small compartment with total strangers - no thanks). However, such is her romance with the notion of long-distance train travel I felt she held back with describing the real nitty gritty, like the cleanliness (or lack of) of some of the trains, how the toilet situation worked out, how you stopped yourself from going crazy on a 50 hour stretch. There were quite a few photos in the book, and apart from one in a US panoramic viewing car and another on the Orient Express, there was hardly a photo of inside a single train. Where were the obvious photos inside the Trans Siberian trains or one of the Japanese bullet trains or one of the many Chinese trains? I had to resort to Google to find out what the difference in appearance was between a Chinese soft sleeper train vs a hard sleeper.

All in all it was interesting enough, but I couldn't quite shake the feeling that Rajesh and her boyfriend were gap year backpackers desperately trying to convince us they were something much more serious than travel box-tickers. There was an immaturity to her travel approach that irked me (barely mentioning Europe and the US, for example, as if they were so pedestrian for a seasoned traveller like herself).

3.5 stars - enjoyable enough, but I wouldn't go out of my way to find a copy of it. There are plenty of better travel books out there.… (más)

This book was a 3.5 stars for me, and I struggled between giving it a 3 or a 4 star.

Rajesh wrote on an interesting topic, and I enjoyed the book. However, there was an ultimate lack of personality to the book, and I never felt immersed by Rajesh's writing. More so, I felt like I followed along with a series of postcards back home - touching on her experiences but never really exploring anything in too great a detail. Perhaps the breadth of subject constricted any true depth to the book.

I don't agree with others criticisms of Rajesh 'complaining' about third class travel. I never felt that Rajesh went beyond pointing out the reality of certain classes of train travel. She simply noted that in certain regions, on certain classes, you experienced a different level of luxury (or, lack thereof). I felt her 'criticism' (for want of a better word) was authentic however.… (más)

This book was a 3.5 stars for me, and I struggled between giving it a 3 or a 4 star.

Rajesh wrote on an interesting topic, and I enjoyed the book. However, there was an ultimate lack of personality to the book, and I never felt immersed by Rajesh's writing. More so, I felt like I followed along with a series of postcards back home - touching on her experiences but never really exploring anything in too great a detail. Perhaps the breadth of subject constricted any true depth to the book.

I don't agree with others criticisms of Rajesh 'complaining' about third class travel. I never felt that Rajesh went beyond pointing out the reality of certain classes of train travel. She simply noted that in certain regions, on certain classes, you experienced a different level of luxury (or, lack thereof). I felt her 'criticism' (for want of a better word) was authentic however.… (más)