THERE’S SOMETHING enduringly romantic about train travel. The slower pace, the gentle rhythm of the tracks, the ability to surrender responsibility and just gaze out of the window. That’s especially true of the sleeper train, the hotel on wheels aboard which you can bed down in one country and wake up in another. On which you can spend hours admiring the view, chatting to new compartmentmates, sharing bread/biscuits/tea/vodka, watching sunrises and sunsets as you roll ever on.
PHOTOGRAPH: MATT MUNRO
Of course, it’s generally quicker to fly. But if you don’t have to, why rush? Roving by rail means you’re better able to understand the connections between places, and see the scenery segue as cities become suburbs, which become farmland, which become foothills or deserts or plains.
Such journeys can be done in style, channelling the bygone glamour of the Orient Express or the opulence of a maharaja’s palace. But you don’t need such accoutrements when the greatest joy is the journey itself. Even a dirty, frustratingly slow train has its own appeal. Squeezed into a second-class Indian bunk, unfolding your couchette as you bump across Europe, or lazing back in an intercity service in China, you might not get a lot of actual sleep on your sleeper, but you’ll have a dream of a ride.
CHICAGO- SAN FRANCISCO, USA