Let’s be honest, the Mauritania iron ore train isn’t going to be everyone’s idea of fun. I wonder what will I make of it, and will I be tough enough? I’ll soon find out. I sometimes grumble about the temperature of the carriage or the state of the toilets, but on this train, there are no facilities at all. I understand that there is, in fact, a solitary passenger carriage, but I shall be doing as the locals do, and occupying an iron ore truck. After 700 km sat on top of a pile of rubble in the baking sun […]
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I’m catching up here in ‘The Engine Shed’, my office and writing room at my HQ, located in a quiet corner of West Sussex. It’s been a busy 2019. Not busy with travel, but busy with attempting to reorganise my life, move homes, rebuild my new home and finish writing a book – all at the same time. Fortunately, chaos has finally been overcome, and ‘The Railway to Heaven’ has been published. Deep breath – and relax. So now I can turn my attention to organising some new adventures on the rails. In 2017 I took a trip across the […]
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I have written before about the science of adjustment to high altitude, but thought a brief recap might be in order, as it relates to part of the journey featured in my new book. So if you are considering a train trip to the Andes or the Tibetan Plateau, here are some thoughts from my experiences on the rails. It’s about the profile of the climb, not just the absolute height Human beings can succumb to altitude sickness from altitudes as low as 2500m, but the chances of this happening at over 3500m are much higher. To put this into […]
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My latest book will be published on the 10th October and I wanted to share a bit more about it. I thought a good way to do this might be to answer some of the questions that I frequently get asked about the journey. Why did you choose Tibet as your destination? After much studying of my vintage 1956 National Geographic map, I realised that I could fuse together two journeys that I wanted to make – the Trans Manchurian and the Qinghai-Tibet railways – broadly speaking the longest and highest in the world. Tibet is such a fabled place […]
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I have given this train a bit of a grand name. To me it is the essence of crossing the Caucasus on the main line, the route which transports the oil from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. But to the strict timetable enthusiast, this is of course train number 37, the night service between Tbilisi in Georgia and Baku in Azerbaijan. I should probably also apologise for going a bit ‘jazzy’ with my main image for this post. The thing is that all Soviet derived locomotives begin to look the same after a while, so I felt I should […]
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My arrival at Yerevan station is textbook. The taxi driver charges me 600 Dram for the trip, about £1.10. I give him a 400 Dram tip, and he seems very happy, shaking my hand and waving goodbye. “Armnenia good?” he asks me. I tell him “Armenia good, good, good”, as I think his English (far better than my Armenian or even Russian) is very limited. He smiles and leaves me to it. It’s a short stroll into the station, where I find a large and very peaceful Soviet designed hall that reminds me of a Moscow metro station. I can […]
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Over on platform number two of Batumi station this afternoon stand two very different trains. On one side a new double decker Georgian Stadler electric train headed for Tblisi, and opposite it stand seven rather battered old Armenian carriages pulled by a Georgian engine known as train 201, or ‘The Armenian’. It will also head to Tbilisi (at a much slower pace), then turn south, crossing the Armenian frontier and on to Yerevan. I’m very early, and at first the guard of carriage number 6 says I can’t come on board for another 25 minutes. This is a Soviet style […]
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It’s 17.05 on a warm September afternoon on the wide and peaceful platform 1 of the old Ankara station, still functioning behind the modern YHT (high speed) station. If you arrive at the back there are no stairs to deal with, no escalators, just an x-ray machine and you are in at platform level. The woman screening my bags asks me if I have a knife. I tell her it’s little one and just to prepare my food. She accepts this explanation without my needing to open anything to prove my innocence. The ‘Dogu Express’ pulls in slowly from the […]
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Pendik station on the outskirts of Asian Istanbul isn’t the easiest place to reach, especially with heavy luggage. Deciding to avoid multiple forms of public transport, in the end I took a taxi, which took about an hour and cost £17. Please don’t tell my insurers, as Istanbul taxi drivers must rate as some of the maddest in the world, and the traffic can be crazy. But today I’m lucky and I arrive in good time and without any injuries. Descending into the tunnel that forms the working part of the station, I discover that it isn’t possible to get […]
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I keep thinking of this train as the mythical ‘Midnight Express’ from Alan Parker’s 1978 film, which made a big impression on me when I was old enough to watch it. But there were of course no real trains in that film. For Istanbul train based films you have to look to James Bond (‘From Russia With Love’) or Hurcule Poirot (‘Murder on the Orient Express’). Sofia station seems to be a good place to me. It’s a large, slightly brutal, Soviet inspired building, but it is clean and seems safe. Getting a ticket for the Istanbul train proves very […]
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