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rezendiIn Londonium, jet-lagged.
Yes, again.
Just spent an hour in Gatwick's immigration line chatting with a friend of Gary Shteyngart's. (author of Absurdistan, a book I'm planning to buy and read RSN.) It may not be a small world, but it sure is one full of weird coincidences.
I find myself entertaining strange and heretical thoughts, such as: aimless travel is not as thrilling as it used to be, and perhaps there is considerably more to life than wandering about and writing crime novels. But that's probably just the jet-lag talking.
Wednesday I fly to Stockholm, Thursday to St. Petersburg. The next flight is Oct 24, Shanghai-LAX.
Did I leave the iron in? I think I left the iron on.
filler Trains I have ridden:
Australia: one of the many great things about Sydney is that you can take its commuter rail out to the splendiferously beautiful Blue Mountains, just a ninety-minute ride away.
Burkina Faso-Cote d'Ivoire: Ouagadougou-Ferkessedougo, to be precise. A great ride across the Sahel, dining on foods thrust up to us, bargained and paid for through the train windows during our brief stops. Lazy beers-and-chitchat border crossing, which is probably very different since civil war hit Cd'I, alas.
Canada: various tentacles of the VIA rail system within the endpoints of London, Gravenhurst, Ottawa and Quebec City. Civilized in a dull way.
China: Yangshuo-Guiyang, Guiyang-Chongqing, Wuhan-Beijing, Beijing-Shanghai. Pretty good trains, shabby but comfortable, albeit built for smaller people than I. Samovars and blankets. Buying a ticket was always an adventure (this was in 1997) and I was never quite sure I was on the right train until we arrived.
Egypt: Aswan-Alexandria, in stages. Nice trains run by an exceedingly difficult bureaucracy.
France:the TGV from Paris to Nice and back, spectacularly modern; also, along the Riviera to Monaco and Ventimiglia in Italy, spectacular scenery.
Ghana: Takoradi-Kumasi, Kumasi-Accra. The first was no problem at all; the second was insanely, frustratingly slow, man was I glad to finally get to Accra. The snake-oil salesman who passed through the train was interesting though; an evangelistic sales pitch, vending various lotions, potions and powders in the name of Jesus.
Great Britain: various locations. Endpoints: Eastbourne, Edinburgh, Falmouth, Manchester, and some little town just inside the Wales border. Commuted by Thameslink to Blackfriars Station for months. Also, the Chunnel, maybe half a dozen times now.
Greece: Athens-Thessaloniki-Athens. Also, Thessaloniki-Macedonian border and back, because I was bounced for not having a Macedonian visa. Thankfully the train coming the other way took me back to Saloniki for free.
India:Delhi-Agra, Agra-Varanasi, Calcutta-Delhi, Delhi-Rishikesh-Delhi, Mumbai-Goa, Bangalore-Cochi, Cochi-Trivandrum. Various classes ranging from first (very comfortable, good food, but freezing AC) to hard seat (very fascinating, but very not comfortable.) I think I might have hopped on the Toy Train to Darjeeling too at some point; anyway I walked along its track on my way back from Tiger Hill.
Japan: various lines in and around Tokyo and Yokohama, esp. the great Yamanote loop, and the shinkansen down to Kyoto and Hiroshima. Superb, as you'd expect.
Mali: Kayes-Bamako. My God it was hot. Second hottest place in the world, after the Horn of Africa, and they were going through the worst heat wave in thirty years. It was an overnight train, but of course it was massively delayed, and once the sun rose the iron train began to heat like an oven. Beat driving, though; the truck took five days to catch up with us, with heaps of blowouts and breakdowns on the non-road wilderness in between. Our seats were just down from a severed donkey's head in a metal bowl, which was weird.
Mauritania: I didn't actually ride it, but it's worth mentioning that we did see the longest train in the world, which carries iron from Mauritania's inland mine to Nouadhibou. We were waiting in the no-man's-land between Morocco and Mauritania, playing soccer. It was, indeed, a very long train.
Morocco: Agadir-Casablanca-Agadir, if memory serves. And at least one other ride, but I forget where. Full of women carrying immense amounts of goods stuffed under their clothes, so that they all looked size 48, in order to avoid some sort of customs duty I guess. Orange trees at a train station, an oil derrick venting flame in the distance, black bulls and doves and olive trees en route. It's a gorgeous country. Great beaches too. Casablanca kinda sucked though.
Peru:from Agua Caliente, at the foot of Macchu Picchu, back to Cuzco. It was nice to ride instead of walk after four days on the Inca Trail.
USA: Amtrak Montreal-NYC. CalTrain. New Jersey Transit. I think that's it.
Serbia-Macedonia-Greece: Belgrade to Thessaloniki. Weird compartment where the beds folded out to cover the entire flat-space area. Slow and massively overcrowded; thankfully, I had a Walkman and Hybrid Theory. Passed through Macedonia this time (picked up a visa in Sarajevo) but did not stop.
Slovakia: from Bratislava to Vienna and back; the two cities are so close that the former makes a good alternative airport for the latter.
South Africa: Cape Town's suburban rail from downtown to Muizenberg et al. on the Indian Ocean side of the Cape. Basic, somewhat run-down developed-nation public transit; great scenery once you hit the ocean.
Sri Lanka: Colombo-Galle-Colombo, Colombo-Kandy-Colombo. Rusting hulks of metal that somehow made their way along the rails more or less on time. The times I got a seat, they were fine; the times I didn't, it was insanely crowded. The 2004 tsunami overturned a whole coastal train and killed hundreds of those on board.
Tanzania-Zambia: 44 hours from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi. Actually pretty organized and efficient, by African standards. Got slightly sick, but was still fun hanging out in the bar car and watching the savannah roll by.
Thailand: Bangkok-Ko Samui (or the nearest mainland town anyways). Overnight sleeper berth. Quite reasonable if a little down-at-heel.
Zimbabwe: In 1998, linens, pillows, delivered meals, polished wood, loads of tourists spending money, great fun, on time. In 2005, stuck windows, crumbling linoleun, filthy fixtures, wires sprouting from holes where lights used to be, inexplicable delays, no other tourists, bitter resignation from fellow-passengers, the general sense that the system was only a couple of months from total collapse.
Yes, again.
Just spent an hour in Gatwick's immigration line chatting with a friend of Gary Shteyngart's. (author of Absurdistan, a book I'm planning to buy and read RSN.) It may not be a small world, but it sure is one full of weird coincidences.
I find myself entertaining strange and heretical thoughts, such as: aimless travel is not as thrilling as it used to be, and perhaps there is considerably more to life than wandering about and writing crime novels. But that's probably just the jet-lag talking.
Wednesday I fly to Stockholm, Thursday to St. Petersburg. The next flight is Oct 24, Shanghai-LAX.
Did I leave the iron in? I think I left the iron on.
Australia: one of the many great things about Sydney is that you can take its commuter rail out to the splendiferously beautiful Blue Mountains, just a ninety-minute ride away.
Burkina Faso-Cote d'Ivoire: Ouagadougou-Ferkessedougo, to be precise. A great ride across the Sahel, dining on foods thrust up to us, bargained and paid for through the train windows during our brief stops. Lazy beers-and-chitchat border crossing, which is probably very different since civil war hit Cd'I, alas.
Canada: various tentacles of the VIA rail system within the endpoints of London, Gravenhurst, Ottawa and Quebec City. Civilized in a dull way.
China: Yangshuo-Guiyang, Guiyang-Chongqing, Wuhan-Beijing, Beijing-Shanghai. Pretty good trains, shabby but comfortable, albeit built for smaller people than I. Samovars and blankets. Buying a ticket was always an adventure (this was in 1997) and I was never quite sure I was on the right train until we arrived.
Egypt: Aswan-Alexandria, in stages. Nice trains run by an exceedingly difficult bureaucracy.
France:the TGV from Paris to Nice and back, spectacularly modern; also, along the Riviera to Monaco and Ventimiglia in Italy, spectacular scenery.
Ghana: Takoradi-Kumasi, Kumasi-Accra. The first was no problem at all; the second was insanely, frustratingly slow, man was I glad to finally get to Accra. The snake-oil salesman who passed through the train was interesting though; an evangelistic sales pitch, vending various lotions, potions and powders in the name of Jesus.
Great Britain: various locations. Endpoints: Eastbourne, Edinburgh, Falmouth, Manchester, and some little town just inside the Wales border. Commuted by Thameslink to Blackfriars Station for months. Also, the Chunnel, maybe half a dozen times now.
Greece: Athens-Thessaloniki-Athens. Also, Thessaloniki-Macedonian border and back, because I was bounced for not having a Macedonian visa. Thankfully the train coming the other way took me back to Saloniki for free.
India:Delhi-Agra, Agra-Varanasi, Calcutta-Delhi, Delhi-Rishikesh-Delhi, Mumbai-Goa, Bangalore-Cochi, Cochi-Trivandrum. Various classes ranging from first (very comfortable, good food, but freezing AC) to hard seat (very fascinating, but very not comfortable.) I think I might have hopped on the Toy Train to Darjeeling too at some point; anyway I walked along its track on my way back from Tiger Hill.
Japan: various lines in and around Tokyo and Yokohama, esp. the great Yamanote loop, and the shinkansen down to Kyoto and Hiroshima. Superb, as you'd expect.
Mali: Kayes-Bamako. My God it was hot. Second hottest place in the world, after the Horn of Africa, and they were going through the worst heat wave in thirty years. It was an overnight train, but of course it was massively delayed, and once the sun rose the iron train began to heat like an oven. Beat driving, though; the truck took five days to catch up with us, with heaps of blowouts and breakdowns on the non-road wilderness in between. Our seats were just down from a severed donkey's head in a metal bowl, which was weird.
Mauritania: I didn't actually ride it, but it's worth mentioning that we did see the longest train in the world, which carries iron from Mauritania's inland mine to Nouadhibou. We were waiting in the no-man's-land between Morocco and Mauritania, playing soccer. It was, indeed, a very long train.
Morocco: Agadir-Casablanca-Agadir, if memory serves. And at least one other ride, but I forget where. Full of women carrying immense amounts of goods stuffed under their clothes, so that they all looked size 48, in order to avoid some sort of customs duty I guess. Orange trees at a train station, an oil derrick venting flame in the distance, black bulls and doves and olive trees en route. It's a gorgeous country. Great beaches too. Casablanca kinda sucked though.
Peru:from Agua Caliente, at the foot of Macchu Picchu, back to Cuzco. It was nice to ride instead of walk after four days on the Inca Trail.
USA: Amtrak Montreal-NYC. CalTrain. New Jersey Transit. I think that's it.
Serbia-Macedonia-Greece: Belgrade to Thessaloniki. Weird compartment where the beds folded out to cover the entire flat-space area. Slow and massively overcrowded; thankfully, I had a Walkman and Hybrid Theory. Passed through Macedonia this time (picked up a visa in Sarajevo) but did not stop.
Slovakia: from Bratislava to Vienna and back; the two cities are so close that the former makes a good alternative airport for the latter.
South Africa: Cape Town's suburban rail from downtown to Muizenberg et al. on the Indian Ocean side of the Cape. Basic, somewhat run-down developed-nation public transit; great scenery once you hit the ocean.
Sri Lanka: Colombo-Galle-Colombo, Colombo-Kandy-Colombo. Rusting hulks of metal that somehow made their way along the rails more or less on time. The times I got a seat, they were fine; the times I didn't, it was insanely crowded. The 2004 tsunami overturned a whole coastal train and killed hundreds of those on board.
Tanzania-Zambia: 44 hours from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi. Actually pretty organized and efficient, by African standards. Got slightly sick, but was still fun hanging out in the bar car and watching the savannah roll by.
Thailand: Bangkok-Ko Samui (or the nearest mainland town anyways). Overnight sleeper berth. Quite reasonable if a little down-at-heel.
Zimbabwe: In 1998, linens, pillows, delivered meals, polished wood, loads of tourists spending money, great fun, on time. In 2005, stuck windows, crumbling linoleun, filthy fixtures, wires sprouting from holes where lights used to be, inexplicable delays, no other tourists, bitter resignation from fellow-passengers, the general sense that the system was only a couple of months from total collapse.
