Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Paul Theroux

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON · NEW YORK

2008

BOOKS BY PAUL THEROUX

FICTION

Waldo

Fong and the Indians

Girls at Play

Murder in Mount Holly

Jungle Lovers

Sinning with Annie

Saint Jack

The Black House

The Family Arsenal

The Consul's File

A Christmas Card

Picture Palace

London Snow

World's End

The Mosquito Coast

The London Embassy

Half Moon Street

O-Zone

My Secret History

Chicago Loop

Millroy the Magician

My Other Life

Kowloon Tong

Hotel Honolulu

The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro

Blinding Light

The Elephanta Suite

CRITICISM

V. S. Naipaul

NONFICTION

The Great Railway Bazaar

The Old Patagonian Express

The Kingdom by the Sea

Sailing Through China

Sunrise with Seamonsters

The Imperial Way

Riding the Iron Rooster

To the Ends of the Earth

The Happy Isles of Oceania

The Pillars of Hercules

Sir Vidia's Shadow

Fresh Air Fiend

Dark Star Safari

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Copyright © 2008 by Paul Theroux

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from

this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Theroux, Paul.

Ghost train to the Eastern star : on the tracks

of the great railway bazaar / Paul Theroux.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-618-41887-9

1. Asia—Description and travel. 2. Theroux, Paul—

Travel—Asia. 3. Railroad travel—Asia. i. Title.

DS10.T42 2008 915.04'425 0 92— dc22

2008011436

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Robert Overholtzer

Endpaper map by Jacques Chazaud

MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The lines from "Tom O'Roughley" by W. B. Yeats are reprinted with the

permission of AP Watt Ltd on behalf of Gráinne Yeats. The lines from

"plato told." Copyright 1944, © 1972, 1991, by the Trustees of the E. E.

Cummings Trust, from Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings,

edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing

Corporation. Excerpts from "Aubade" and "Water" from Collected Poems

by Philip Larkin. Copyright © 1988, 2003 by the Estate of Philip Larkin.

Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

To Sheila, with love

That feeling about trains, for instance. Of course he had

long outgrown the boyish glamour of the steam engine.

Yet there was something that had an appeal for him in

trains, especially in night trains, which always put queer,

vaguely improper notions into his head.

GEORGES SIMENON

The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

"I'd much rather go by train," said Connie.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Lady Chatterley's Lover

CONTENTS

1. The Eurostar 1

2. The Other Orient Express 14

3. The Ferry to Besiktas 40

4. Night Train to Ankara 59

5. Night Train to Tbilisi 68

6. Night Train to Baku: The Trans-Caucasian 88

7. Night Train from Ashgabat to Mary 103

8. Night Train to Tashkent 136

9. The Shan-e-Punjab Express to Delhi 146

10. Night Train to Jodhpur: The Mandore Express 164

11. Night Train to Jaipur 182

12. Night Train to Mumbai: The "Superfast" Express 193

13. Night Train to Bangalore: The Udyan Express 210

14. The Shatabdi Express to Chennai 225

15. The Coastal Line to Galle and Hambantota 237

16. The Slow Train to Kandy 258

17. Ghost Train to Mandalay 265

18. The Train to Pyin-Oo-Lwin 283

19. Night Train to Nong Khai 295

20. Night Train to Hat Yai Junction: Special Express 309

21. Night Train to Singapore: The Lankawi Express 316

22. The Slow Train to the Eastern Star 341

23. The Boat Sontepheap to Phnom Penh 351

24. The Mekong Express 367

25. Night Train to Hue 376

26. The Day Train to Hanoi 387

27. Tokyo Andaguraundo 400

28. Night Train to Hokkaido: Hayate Super Express 422

29. The Limited Express: Sarobetsu to Wakkanai 428

30. Night Train to Kyoto: The Twilight Express 440

31. The Trans-Siberian Express 460

32. Night Train to Berlin and Beyond 493

THE EUROSTAR

YOU THINK of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time. Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people's privacy—being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders. The traveler is the greediest kind of romantic voyeur, and in some well-hidden part of the traveler's personality is an unpickable knot of vanity, presumption, and mythomania bordering on the pathological. This is why a traveler's worst nightmare is not the secret police or the witch doctors or malaria, but rather the prospect of meeting another traveler.