Around India in 80 Trains

Author: Monisha Rajesh

Rating: ⭐️⭐️.5

Although Rajesh’s parents are Indian, she grew up mostly in the UK (apart from a brief two-year stint where her family returned to India during her childhood), so she’d never explored the country much beyond visiting relatives and such, so, partially inspired by Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, she decided it would be interesting to explore India in 80 trains.

This book is highly personal. It centres on Rajesh’s travel experience with little higher-level observation or perspective incorporated. After reading this book, I’ve come away with what is hopefully a fairly accurate account of what it might be like to travel around India as a tourist on a series of trains, which I suppose might have been what she was trying to accomplish.

What I felt was missing from this book, what I’ve observed makes, for me, a compelling piece of travel writing, is the wider perspective about the place in question. The point of Rajesh’s journey seemed to be mainly to tick off as many trains as possible, and therefore she spent very little time in any given place, so we get only surface-level glimpses of India as a country. This problem is inherent with the concept – to take 80 trains around India in a matter of months. This by nature can’t lead to much exploration of any given stop, though if you like reading about the experience of riding Indian trains, this book has you covered.

There were some parts of this book I enjoyed, that really got into that zone of where I think exemplary travel writing sits, like when Rajesh visits the Lifeline Express that basically serves as a mobile hospital to parts of India that are medically underserved. This was a great example of where travel writing can bring the reader a valuable perspective on systemic problems (or benefits) in a certain place and expand their understanding of the place in question. But, unfortunately, this was lost among a sea of gripes about the frustrations in the author’s travel experience, which became repetitive and somewhat boring.