The Tao of Travel

The state railway of Thailand is comfortable and expertly run, and now I knew enough of rail travel in Southeast Asia to avoid the air-conditioned sleeping cars, which are freezing cold and have none of the advantages of the wooden sleepers: wide berths and a shower room. There is not another train in the world that has a tall stone jar in the bath compartment, where, before dinner, one can stand naked, sluicing oneself with scoops of water. Thai trains have the shower jar with the glazed dragon on its side, Sri Lankan ones the car reserved for Buddhist monks, Indian ones a vegetarian kitchen and six classes, Iranian ones prayer mats, Malaysian ones a noodle stall, Vietnamese ones bulletproof glass on the locomotive, and on every carriage of a Russian train there is a samovar. The railway bazaar, with its gadgets and passengers, represented the society so completely that to board it was to be challenged by the national character.—

GRB

Years before, I had noticed how trains accurately represented the culture of a country: the seedy distressed country has seedy distressed railway trains, the proud efficient nation is similarly reflected in its rolling stock, as Japan is. There is hope in India because the trains are considered vastly more important than the monkey wagons some Indians drive. Dining cars, I found, told the whole story (and if there were no dining cars the country was beneath consideration). The noodle stall in the Malaysian

train, the borscht and bad manners on the Trans-Siberian, the kippers and fried bread on the Flying Scotsman. And here on Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited I scrutinized the breakfast menu and discovered that it was possible for me to order a Bloody Mary or a Screwdriver: "a morning pick-me-up," as that injection of vodka into my system was described. There is not another train in the world where one can order a stiff drink at that hour of the morning.—

OPE

Particular Train Journeys

SOMERSET MAUGHAM IN THAILAND: WHY GET OFF THE TRAIN?

The train arrived at Ayudhya. I was content to satisfy my curiosity about this historic place by a view of the railway station (after all, if a man of science can reconstruct a prehistoric animal from its thigh bone why cannot a writer get as many emotions as he wants from a railway station? In the Pennsylvania Depot is all the mystery of New York and in Victoria Station the grim, weary vastness of London).

—

The Gentleman in the Parlour

(1930)

PAUL MORAND ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS: PARIS TO CONSTANTINOPLE IN TWO PARAGRAPHS