NIGHT trains are unpredictable: I recall one frantic taxi ride to Ullapool ferry — the sleeper arrived late — and the endless nocturnal journey from Leningrad to a remote Estonian monastery. But Monisha Rajesh is clear about the romance, social enjoyment, and moral worth of night-time rail journeys.
Since the pandemic, train-sleeper travel has had a revival. So, Rajesh embarks and alights on 18 trains in four continents.
Nocturnal these journeys may be, but they are never silent, and never without tales to tell. We meet Simon Gronowski, in Mechelen, to which he escaped when his parents were shipped (by train, and at night, to their deaths in Auschwitz). Then there is Dottie, running her restaurant in Savannah, Georgia — it is rare for a black woman to run her own business in the “South” of the United States.
Then, in Jodhpur, in Pakistan, we meet Mahaveer, who “out-dappered all the guides Monisha had ever come across” with his black jodhpurs and leopard-print juttis on his feet. Among other things, he was taking her to Ghanshyam Gawlani, the “Omelette Man”, who cracks 1000-plus eggs daily. At the next stop, both her travelling companions were in need: Marc had ripped his trousers, and so Mohan gave him his sweatpants, while Marc scratched the soft forehead of a cow chilling in the middle of the road, and Jamie found deodorant, not believing that the toy shop could be the only source of deodorants, selling them in five different fragrances.
If you can live with opinions freely expressed — on colonialism, Israel and Gaza, climate change, and much else — you will find this book by turns exhilarating and challenging. Generally, you will learn more about people than places, although who knew the dire fate of Rovaniemi in Lapland in 1943, under the Nazis? Your Christmas will be enlivened and touched by a warm humanity.
Vedat, in Dogu, eastern Turkey, reflected: “Travelling is living. Life begins after you’ve arrived and reached your loved ones.”
The Rt Revd Stephen Platten is a former Bishop of Wakefield.
Moonlight Express: Around the world by night train
Monisha Rajesh
Bloomsbury £22
(978-1-5266-4412-1)
Church Times Bookshop £19.80
