Determined to finally escape my lockdown life and get back on the rails, at last I now have a plan, and I think it’s a reasonably cunning one. This feels really good. The first year of my life in the pandemic wasn’t so bad, as at least I was able to use the isolation to write Silver Streak, and still had quite a bit of work to finish off on my HQ. But the second year has felt a lot worse. With nothing in the diary to look forward to or plan towards, I began to drift and lose my train mojo. Like many of us I have experienced some dark moods, but I’m lucky to have some wonderful friends around me who have helped keep me smiling. So I pressed the button on booking some flights just a week or so ago, and just the act of making a booking has immediately lifted my spirits. I find myself back with the satisfying focus of planning and organising my new adventure. Having been a bit of a hermit here for two years, it’s going to be thrilling to be back out in the world.

I’m going back to Thailand. This wasn’t my original plan and at face value might not sound too adventurous. Apart from the delayed Mauritania trip, I had been working towards returning to Sri Lanka to further explore the country by train. My problems there were not insurmountable, but I felt that I was pushing absolutely everything uphill. This was rather surprising to me at a time when you would think people would welcome writing about a place that badly needed to promote tourism. My frustration grew for a few weeks, and then one evening in front of the fire (with a reasonable glass of sherry!) I made the decision to completely change tack. It was a decision of the heart, but sometimes you need to trust your gut feel. I think its good to be able to recognise when its better to start again and move on, so I have packed my research notes and maps into a small box, hoping to revisit this plan in the future.

So on to Thailand. I love Thailand; I love its trains, I love its food and most of all, I love its people. So why not explore Thailand by train instead? And there it was. I worked into the night concocting a rough plan to see if it would pass my litmus test of enough trains, interesting places and unusual things to do. A careful blend of comfort in a plan, but unpredictability that things are bound not to go as planned. By dawn I had a new map on the wall, and it already had lots of labels and coloured pen marks.This is always always a good sign – white smoke out of the chimney here at the Engine Shed!

It’s not going to be an A to B kind of journey, but more of a slow burn series of adventures. I’m thinking of it as a ‘grand tour’. All the rails in Thailand lead to Bangkok, so that will be my forward base, and I will head out on the 4000 kilometres of tracks as far as I can – within sight of Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia. The journey has had to be adjusted a little bit as a result of the current COVID rules. I’d love to visit places on the other side of each border, but at the time of writing, this would entail a huge amount of red tape and multiple quarantines, so I shall stay within the land of smiles. In passing, the photos in this blog were taken when I did the run from the UK to Singapore a few years ago – this become the book A Bridge Even Further. Back then I came across the border from Cambodia at Poipet and left through the Malaysian border at Padang Besar. I shall be revisiting these routes.

I’m looking forward to witnessing some big changes to the Thai rail network first hand. This year Bang Sue Grand will finally open, the largest railway station in South East Asia, and many fear that the wonderful Hua Lamphong will cease to be ‘Bangkok Station’. Like most, I’m rather sad about that, and want to see it in its full glory for one last time. At the same time new rail links are opening up. Perhaps the biggest one is from China across Laos to Thailand, proving a new way to reach further south bypassing Vietnam and a few dusty bus trips in Cambodia. But even that route is changing, and there are also plans for investment in electrification of parts of the Thai rail network. This all has to be good news for train travel in South East Asia.

Travelling by train in Thailand is fun. It’s also cheap and easy to organise, allowing me to be less constrained by a fixed itinerary than I might normally be. I will add a list of trains I’m planning to take on the adventures page (link above). I’m planning a mix of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class, day trains and night trains, Korean carriages, Chinese carriages, Japanese carriages and Thai carriages. I’m getting it all sorted as you read this. The red tape to enter Thailand is quite substantial at the moment, and many travel blogs describe the challenges with the process of getting extended visas, a Thailand Pass, and quarantine arranged, but I’m sure it will all be worth it. I’m trying to achieve a few things each day, and building up bundles of documents to upload in a format that will hopefully be approved.

If you have any thoughts, or ideas for things to do or top tips for getting the most out of life on the rails in Thailand, please do leave a message here or say ‘hello’ on Twitter – OnTheRails. I will update on the plan once I have things more organised.

We were called before the train had been reversed onto the platform, I think mainly as the red cap attendants needed several journeys to get passengers who needed assistance to the train. It arrived 30 minutes before departure, and I quickly settled into my roomette, upstairs in carriage 0430, one of two sleepers on the train. You might think of long-distance trains as enormous, but this one consists of just two sleepers, two coach cars, a baggage car, a dining car, and a sightseeing lounge car. On some routes, extra carriages get taken on and off, but this is the core of every Amtrak long-distance train set.

Once I had a dinner reservation made I unpacked my small bag and set the room up how I’m used to doing, in a way that I know where things are in the dark and the more confined space once the bed is made up from the two seats. I actually hang my bags up, leaving more floor space and I also have a way of stacking devices between the table and the window. This is another one of the slightly older sleepers, so it has an ‘open’ closet cupboard making it feel slightly more spacious inside the roomette. Elsewhere you only really notice its age in the toilets, which are a bit worn out.

The observation car, or ‘sightseeing lounge’ has two different configurations downstairs, but is pretty much the same up top. One version LA to ABQ has a bar-style service counter, the other from ABQ to CHI is a self-service one, with a cashier area.

The food and drink offering is the same. The attendants down here have to ‘sell’ their wares to the coach customers, whereas food is included in the dining car to those in the sleeper coaches. This means a bit too much activity on the intercom with discounted deals and frequent opening and closing announcements.

Coach customers are welcome to come into the dining car, and can pay the prices on the menu.

Overnight California gives way to Arizona, and the cowboy country I wake up to is strangely familiar from all those western movies. But nothing prepares me for the big sky and little fluffy clouds. I surprise myself and get up for an early breakfast, even though we have changed a time zone overnight, back to mountain time. Time zones on Amtrak trains can be tricky if you have a dining car reservation around the time of the change – clarification is needed. Before long we are in New Mexico. It’s cold at night here, and snow lies in shaded areas.

In the late morning, I get off the train in Albuquerque for a planned side trip and get back on the same carriage 3 days later. My off the rails experience were to do with research for my next book, which I’m really getting immersed in at the moment. You will have to wait to see what I got up to!

Back on board in time for lunch, the train gets refueled before setting off east. I meet a man in a white biohazard suit on the lower deck, and he’s clearly trying to fix a plumbing problem in the limited time we have left at the stop. He runs out of time and leaves us with just one of the thee toilets in working order. The shower is fine though, and there are more toilets than needed for the number of people in the adjacent sleeper.

I munch on a Ceasar salad for lunch and discuss all things Amtrak with my fellow passengers. I love the afternoons on a long-distance Amtrak route, I often take a nap after lunch and then spend the rest of the afternoon watching the sun get lower which can make for some good photographs. We reach Colorado in the early evening and its time to freshen up for dinner. I book a community seat at a table for 7.30 pm, about the time we reach La Junta for a crew change. But there is something else going on here. The Engineer says there will be an ‘equipment change’ and the power will go out. What he doesn’t tell us is how long this will take, so I sit alone at a table in the dining car sipping a couple of glasses of wine in the darkness for two hours, when new locos are finally added back on. My steak is a late-night feast, and well worth the wait.

Over breakfast, the really nice lady who serves in the dining car introduces me to the man who fixed the train last night. Its something to do with pumps and flooding, but I avoid technical questions. I eat my usual three-egg omelet with cheddar cheese and mushrooms and enjoy the views of the Kansas prairie.

On the platform at Kansas City I chat with one of the Amish travelers who points out that we have acquired a couple more locos, now four in total as well as some other carriages, the mighty Chief must be quite a sight, but I can’t get far enough to photograph it and the attendant warns me to stay close as we are shortening stops to make up time.

I have lunch with a couple of high school girls on a class trip to Washington. I good chance to ask questions about the latest mobile phones – mine is eight years old. I also get to try out the new Amtrak BBQ pork wings, which are great. More on this in an Amtrak menu post.

We catch up nearly an hour crossing Missouri and into Ilinois. The rail towns are pretty and they all seem to have museums with steam engines trackside. Tempting, but no time to do anything more than a cursory photograph. Eventually, we pull into Chicago Union Station at 4.20 pm. The Chief has covered 2265 miles in around 44 hours. All in all a great run, even though the toilets didn’t work and a two-hour wait for my steak on the run from Albuquerque. It’s all about the staff on a train like this, and the crew on the Chief have been totally first class.

Waiting for the 09.35 train, passengers mill about in the pre-sunshine cold of the desert morning until the doors of the duplex carriages open 20 minutes before our departure. They are talkative, friendly and really interesting.

Onboard the train is clean and comfortable, laid out over two decks and a mezzanine level at each end. A flurry of walkie talkie activity and we are good to go, the fireman releases the handbrake. ‘Meep, meep’, the Railrunner sets off up the line to Santa Fe ‘on the ball’. The conductor sells me a ticket as she does her rounds, $10 for a return journey, free if you are over 62, and reduced if you are a student or a veteran.

There is no catering on board and I wish I had picked up a cup of coffee before hopping on.

Out the window, there is a massive amount of open space and we pass towns and Navaho reservations en route. Life here is single story and simple. I read that the Navaho don’t like photographs being taken of their reservations, so I have respected this.

Sticking to our timetable we arrive into the Santa Fe railyard on time at 11.18. I’m greeted by freezing temperatures – no one told me it was much colder than Albuquerque here!

I spend a pleasant few hours shopping, eating and drinking in North America’s oldest capital before getting the Railrunner back ‘home’. The railyard district is really interesting but quiet today as it’s a cold February morning. It’s really busy here at the weekends, especially in the summer with farmers’ markets and street vendors.

Its fun to be on something very different from Amtrak today, but that’s not a criticism of Amtrak, just the fun and excitement of a bit of variety. If anything I’m now a bit bored of silver covered trains, and as a retired marketing man, I love the branding of the Railrunner. I had heard that it even had a ‘meep meep’ sound like the roadrunner cartoon, but I didn’t hear it today!

I’ve got used to watching ‘Wheel of Fortune’ on the television in the Amtrak lounge before catching trains at this time of the day. I’m getting good at it. The Sunset Limited is running half an hour late, so time to watch the whole show. It’s a friendly place, and everything is straightforward here.

I’m greeted by Melinda on the platform outside carriage 0130, which turns out to be an older design than I have seen before. It looks similar to the more common Superliner, but the toilets, switches and roomette design is slightly different. However, it’s biggest shortcoming is that although there are controls, the aircon system is either on jungle or iceberg setting, and no one in the carriage can agree which is better. The most obvious way to tell its an older coach is that it does not have an enclosed cupboard with coathangers in the roomette.

I make the last sitting in the dining car, which is run by the dream team, Eggi on announcements, seating and jokes, and John serving the food and wisecracks. Lovely people and it made the journey great fun. Next door in the sightseeing lounge, another John runs the cafe car.

I hopped off at a late-night stop in San Antonio, which I discovered to be full of dodgy people. Law and order here is down to armed guards on the platform. I had to answer a string of questions to get anywhere back near our train and wasn’t allowed to move freely to take my usual nightly photo of the engine.

When I wake early the next morning to Eggi whispering ‘waffles, coffee, pancakes’ on the intercom. I’m greeted by the sight of great plains, and glimpses of the Rio Grande over breakfast. Each meal on this train involves meeting three new people at the table, and you never know who you might sit next to. All but one of my fellow diners were really interesting, but you will have to read the book to find out what I did!

I hoped off in Alpine, Texas for some fresh air and almost had a heart attack when the train double-stopped. This is a procedure when on shorter platforms the train stops twice, moving forward a 100m or so. But the feeling of seeing the train slowly roll away from you isn’t for the faint-hearted!

We reached El Paso in the afternoon, and the infamous wall and the lawless Mexican town of Juarez over the border were right by the side of the line. As we set off, something was wrong back in the sightseeing lounge – we had left one passenger behind, but his partner and luggage were still on board. The sentiment amongst passengers here was mixed. The golden words are ‘always stay close to the train’, but you had to feel for him. Apparently he didn’t like flying, but now he would have to take a flight to Phoenix as the next train wasn’t for another three days.

We rumbled out of Texas after 20 hours crossing one state, and into Arizona to a train wide communal ‘yeee-haaa’. I have to say at this point I was in rail nirvana, and happily spent the afternoon taking photos of the amazing landscape and doing some writing.

A beer to watch the sunset, another fine meal in the dining car and bed after a stop in Tucson. Sleep came very easy, and I woke to the announcement we would be in LA in less than 10 minutes at 05.18 Pacific time ‘on the bumper’. See how I’m learning to speak Amtrak!

Union Station is quiet and well ordered, the only problem is there are no taxis at this time of the morning. But the team in the Amtrak lounge somehow got me one and sneaked it round the station to a secret lounge door. I have a long weekend in LA before getting back on the rails. Next stop hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque.

The Sunset Limited is a Superliner bound for LA, a not inconsiderable 1995 mile trip in over 48 hours. I was just on for the first 363 miles and 8 hours to Houston, Texas today.

I’m not going to beat about the bush, this was one of the best train journeys I have ever been on. The best Amtrak kit (a Superliner with full catering), amazing passengers and lovely professional and helpful Amtrak staff. An 8-hour trip seemed to last 8 minutes. What a day!

Good Amtrak staff set the tone, and here onboard everyone was keen to help, and it felt amazing. But the best moment of the day was when I asked my carriage attendant Paul about the dining car. ‘We got a Chef onboard’  he said proudly – my spirit lept!

Paul had his own supply of coffee on the go in the carriage and everything set up. Simple things like fresh pillows were in the roomette for my use during the day. He had time to announce extended stops and explain what was going on to me. This is the Amtrak service that I love.

I had lunch with a Mexican film producer & his wife, who was a rafting guide, and a quick dinner with an amazing US Marine Corp vet heading to San Diego before hopping off. You meet interesting people on trains, and they have time to talk. All thanks to the community seating system. I’ll share some of these stories in my book. But what about the food? Such a difference. Real food cooked by a chef. How many scheduled (regular) dining cars in the world ask the question ‘How would you like your steak cooked?’.

Mine was cooked perfectly to my request. I declined the obligatory ‘A1 sauce’ and enjoyed it with mustard, which the attendant couldn’t understand. He’d never tried mustard. The desert was equally good, cheesecake with strawberries and optional whipped cream.

Returning from a long lunch, a quick nap and some writing, and soon it was dinner time. Then far to soon we arrived in Houston on time at 18.20. I was sad to say goodbye to the attendants, chefs, fireman, and engineers who had all looked after me, answered my questions, and forgave my ‘East Texas’ accent. I’m back on board this train once I have completed my astronaut training, so really looking forward to it. Imagine getting on a train at about 18.30, and being asked what time you want to have a table for a freshly cooked dinner. Time to freshen up and have a drink in the observation lounge and get dressed! This is living ‘on the rails’ and it is what will make me want to return to try all the Amtrak routes west of the Mississipi in the USA. Thank you, Amtrak!

Checking my bag in takes a couple of minutes, and I’m quickly seated in the refurbished Metropolitan Lounge until the train is called about 40 minutes before departure.

A short walk to platform 18, where I’m greeted by a Superliner, a train made up of the Amtrak double-deck carriages. Mine tonight is 5900, where I’m greeted by Lala, who shows me upstairs to my roomette, number 5.

Departure is on time, and the train reverses out before changing direction and skirting round the outskirts of the windy city to head south. The good news is that this train has a double-deck dining car (now called a sleeper passenger lounge) and an observation car with panoramic views and a café/bar car beneath. The bad news is it’s the airline-style catering again.

At first glance, the Superliner roomettes look very similar to Viewliners, but on closer examination, the berths are slightly wider, as there is no en-suite commode. The controls are also different, and there is no wi-fi.

A Superliner has rooms on both decks – roomettes, bedrooms, and also even a family room downstairs, where there are also 4 bathrooms and a shower. I’m in a roomette up top tonight. People walk between carriages on the upper deck only, so it’s busier up here, but easier to get to the dining car next door. I think its quieter below, and there is also noticeably less sway and roll lower down.

Dinner is a disappointing Cajun rice bowl and a glass of Heineken after they send a search party to locate a bottle opener. But service is with more of a relaxed smile now compared to my last journey, where the dining atmosphere was like attending a lesson in primary school.

Lala makes my bed up whilst I’m having my click & ping meal, so when I return I have to unmake it, as its film club in here tonight – a double bill of ‘Live & Let Die’ and ‘Southern Comfort’. I’m going to discuss aspects of both in my next book. I also open a bottle of Oregan Pinot Noir which I brought with me. It’s okay to bring your own booze onto the train if you are in a sleeper, but not a public space. Wine is $8 for a miniature airline bottle in the bar, which seems on the pricey side when you add a tip, that’s $40 a bottle!

The sun rose in Memphis and I ate my breakfast sandwich (quite tasty) looking out over the Missouri plains. I have to place my lunch order before I can have my breakfast, and it’s hard to judge my stomach this early. I opt for the Asian noodle bowl and hope I have second-guessed what I might want in a few hour’s time. I also have to book a table time. Not because the dining car will be full, but so that they can manage all that cooking time in a single microwave oven. I’m rather pleased it’s my last train with this food system on board, as next week I shall be west of the Mississippi and on the proper dining setup.

The landscape and the weather have changed overnight and as we reach Louisiana it’s getting swampy. I even pass a station which has a pet alligator in a cage on the platform! This was my first experience of refueling an Amtrak train – they don’t swap the loco over like in Russia, but instead an oil tanker parks up opposite on the road and they pipe the fuel on. This takes about 20 minutes.

The final manoeuvre into New Orleans is a reverse shunt into the station. For some reason, this requires a test emergency stop, and everyone has to sit down preparing for something like out the film ‘Unstoppable’, which is actually so mild we didn’t notice it. So we are on the bumper 20 minutes early. Over a 20 hour journey, I imagine the on-time arrival is largely down to the potential delay of freight trains, so its very much luck of the draw.

A couple of days to explore the local cuisine before heading over to Texas next week!

I shall take more baths in 2020, as it was quite a productive experience; thoughts came to me about several things I was writing, ideas for new material and solutions to minor problems that had been clogged in my mind. But all good things come to an end, so I drained the water and air-dried myself a bit before getting out. But there was the snag. The bath is really deep and narrow, and to get out you have to be able to bench press your bodyweight behind you, as if on parallel bars. These are muscles I haven’t had to use for some time, and after some effort, I eventually managed to haul myself out. But if I can’t pull myself out of a domestic bath, how will I pull myself up into an iron ore carriage carrying all my belongings? So its time for some pre-trip fitness training. Nothing too serious, but some simple weights and the bike are now on the daily to-do list.

Between finishing some marketing work for my latest book, I have had some more time to prepare for my 2020 adventures. So I have been catching up on kit preparation and working out what I need for each trip. For me, that’s a good sort out of half a dozen bags each carrying a similar mix of mainly the same things. I need to get more disciplined to stop this duplication. I remember when I used to play games in khaki whilst at university, we used to have very simple lists, the most important one being called ‘CEFO’, or Central European Fighting Order. It was quite a big list, but you knew that if you had everything on it you would be just fine. So I now need to create a ‘NARO’ (North American Rail Order) and a NADRO (North African Desert Rail Order)..

The US trip is fairly simple as Amtrak will let me check in far more than I need – two bags up to 25 kg plus hand luggage. In California, I can even carry a surfboard on as hand luggage if I get carried away in Santa Monica. I can bring all my gadgets and creature comforts with abandon. The simple challenge is that I will need to plan for the cold of NYC and Chicago as well as the relative winter warmth of Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico. The only other thing to watch out for is that an individual bag can’t weigh more than 25kg or they won’t accept it.

Mauritania presents a very different challenge. No checked-in luggage and a carry on size limit. There is too big a chance of it not making a flight connection in Morocco. So I have been laying out kit on a bed and discarding essential items until they all fit in a little rucksack. The only bonus is you are also allowed a laptop bag, which of course I shall bring without a laptop. I had prepared well and printed out the luggage rules for the airline, but now my companion tells me we will be flying internally on one leg as well as the road route looks a bit dodgy, so I’m juggling mixed carry on rules with airlines I have no experience of. As my Africa old hand next-door neighbour said to me, ‘it’s Africa, anything is possible’.

The only major sacrifice in my bag has been my main camera, a Fuji X-T20, which is just too big. Instead, I’m taking its older little brother, my trusty X-100. I have had to add a few mission-specific things like goggles, face masks, and protective clothing, but anything bulky we will buy locally. I have simplified my electrical devices and cables significantly and this has saved a lot of room. I still plan to take an iPad and a Kindle if space permits. The first aid kit has been quartered, and really just now contains an assortment of pills. The one place where would have liked to carry a full kit, but I will just have to go with this. Any spare space will be filled with jelly babies until I reach the maximum carry on bag weight of 12kg. The more I wear on the plane the better..

On the subject of health, I had an appointment with the nurse at my new local surgery last week. I doubt she sees many people heading to these parts, and first of all, we had a quick chat about my sanity, but when I showed her my past travel clinic records she just got down to sticking lots of needles in my arms. At one point she asked me the purpose of my visit, but I decided not to confess my love of trains. The only point of contention was to do with having a valid Yellow Fever certificate. This is a compulsory item, and you used to need one every 10 years, but the new international standard is that once in a lifetime is now considered enough protection. I have a certificate from about 25 years ago, so hopefully, there will be no problems with the paperwork. I have printed off the changes to the rules in English and French and added them to my little pile of red tape. I have to say that this was an NHS clinic at a local surgery, and it was brilliant. The advice was excellent and jabs were done with precision and efficiency. The only vaccination I could not get there was a booster to my Rabies, but as I have had the full course before, I’m not going to worry about that.

Social media has made many jokes about the aviation term ‘speedy boarding’ (I vaguely remember this as originally an Easyjet term?). As travellers, we get conditioned to certain Pavlovian behaviours and often queue to get on board planes as soon as possible. Perhaps a fear of having luggage put in the hold or being left behind? But how do you apply this mindset to an iron ore train that is nearly two kilometres long with a couple of hundred wagons and no numbered seats? Or rather, no seats at all. Where do you stand if you don’t want a long walk in the desert, and how to choose a truck that ‘works’. I say that, as I read an article written by a couple of travellers who picked a wagon that jolted and jumped so much they decided to change wagons whilst the train was on the move. I’m not sure I would want to do that. So ‘speedy boarding’ Mauritania style will involve no queues at all and being ready to scrabble on with the kit quickly as the train only stops for a few minutes. It will also involve climbing a ladder that looks a long way up. I will, of course, let you know how this goes and if my weight training was sufficient preparation in due course.

After 700 km sat on top of a pile of rubble in the baking sun and freezing night, it would perhaps be a fair reward to be able to walk into a hotel in the coastal city of Nouadhibou and ask the barman for a long and very cold frothy glass of lager. When J. Lee Thompson directed the 1958 film ‘Ice Cold in Alex’, he embedded perhaps the most famous product placement ever – used by Carlsberg the world over with the copy line ‘worth waiting for’. But there’s the rub. The chances of reliving this moment (assuming I’m lucky enough to reach the coast by train) are zero. Mauritania is a strictly enforced dry country. I will have to get on an international flight to enjoy that well earned cold beer.

I’m fortunate to have a travel partner for this trip – not just anyone, but serial traveller Lindy Pyrah, the only person I know who has taken this trip before, and last time she did it solo. Her trip went well, but she admits that there is a certain safety and comfort here in not being alone. Real or imagined, risks can be hard to assess in a strange place, and there can be few stranger places than in a country like Mauritania. We have regular chats about the challenges ahead and new words crop up in the conversation that rather concern me. Ebola. Kidnap. Fiches. Slavery. Abduction. But then she tells me it’s a lovely (mostly) peaceful country and everything’s going to be just fine.

Certain aspects of our trip remain unpublished for security reasons, but I have set up a map and a new adventure page on the website. The train clearly runs in both directions, so you can travel back to the mine in an empty carriage, or from the desert to the coast in one filled with ore. Well, the view is better from on top of the ore, and Lindy says you can dig out a ‘nest’ in it too. You just have to try and avoid falling off. After the journey, a serious cleanup is needed, and this is easier to achieve in Nouadhibou than back in the desert. So we shall travel by road to Choum, a place where the train briefly stops and climb on board.

If things were not shaping up to be alien enough to me, I have been told to bring a carry on bag and nothing more. The chance of a checked bag making the North African connection that is required are apparently small anyway, and this journey needs to be approached in an ‘alpine style’, fast and light. Instead, we will equip in the desert town of Atar. I’m quite excited about this, because it means I might get to dress up like an extra from ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (or more likely a Jawa from ‘Star Wars”). Come to think of it the landscape is reminiscent of Tatooine, and that’s perhaps also why Luc Besson decided to shoot much of his 1997 film ‘The Fifth Element’ here.

I met a wise Amish man on a train from Chicago to Denver a couple of years ago. He asked me what my hopes were for the trip I was on. I had to think really hard how to answer such a good question. My hopes for this trip, other than coming back in one piece, are that I get to meet Berber and Saharan people, to see the milky way from the middle of the dark desert, and to embrace the thrill of something totally outside of my comfort zone.

The full story will be told when we return, but as the plan and kit comes together I will share updates.

(Top image courtesy of Michał Sałaban, Wikimedia Commons)

My time in Tbilisi has come quickly to an end – what a great city! On Saturday night I find myself in a taxi screeching round bends and street racing towards the train station, music blaring from the upgraded car sound system. I have become something of an expert in all the many taxi scams out there, and enjoy watching the driver go through the motions of using a few of his weaker tricks on me, especially as we have already agreed a fare of 10 Lari. First of all he tries the invalid routine, shows me a scar and says he’s not well. I sympathise and ignore this line of conversation. Then he decides to up the ante and says that the fare is actually priced in US dollars. I smile and pat him on the shoulder – treating this move as though it is a bit of Georgian humour. This completely defuses the possibility of a renegotiation. Keep smiling. Then he decides to try the ‘double fare because you are only one passenger’ routine. I just wag my finger and show hime my 10 Lari note. Finally he starts driving like an absolute tool, perhaps to scare me into paying more, but I just close my eyes and breathe deeply. Eventually we pull into the station still alive and in a taxi with no new scrapes or major missing parts. Exasperated at my resolve he gives in and helps me with my luggage. I give him 15 Lari, that’s about a £1 tip. He settles for that looking a little like he has been ‘done’, and wishes me well. Georgian taxi drivers are real chancers, as well as generally quite dangerous drivers.

Tbilisi station is set inside a shopping centre. Up on the second floor the display board rolls in Georgian and then English, confirming all is in order. I head to platform 1, and the train is there but locked up as I’m too early. Eventually the Azeri ladies who run tonight’s train open the doors and let a few of us on board. I’m in carriage number 6, berth 7, it’s a modern SV, or two berth first class carriage. It looks a bit ‘Cold War’ on the outside, but it is clean, comfortable and quite new inside.

I’m sharing tonight with a charming Frenchman called Gerrard, who lives in Reunion and has been travelling around Iran in a way that British and US passport holders can only dream of. The train is made up of a couple of SV coaches, 4 ‘kupe’ (four berth) carriages, and for the adventurous, a single ‘Plaskart’ wagon containing 52 open plan berths. Once again there is no restaurant carriage, a consistent disappointment so far on nearly all of this trip (I guess there was one on the Paris – Munich TGV, but I was served at my seat). Up front we will be pulled to the border by a Georgian locomotive. The carriage attendants are keen to chat, and one speaks quite good English. The banter is friendly and strangely flirtatious.

We set off with a series of bumps and bunny hops down the line at about 20.40. On board everything seems to work, but I don’t try the television in the room as its unlikely to be showing anything in English. The toilets are pressurised and there is an enormous red button on the wall with a sign saying ‘Unload!”.

At about 22.00 we reach the Georgian frontier, and the train stops here for an hour. I have no idea why, but the upside of this inactivity is that we are allowed to get off and hang out with the dogs. There is even chilled beer on sale at a couple of enterprising pop up shops by the side of the Police station. I enjoy a couple of Aisi (Icy) beers before we head into Azerbaijan. Typical of everything I have experienced on this trip a couple of Georgian men who speak English help translate my beverage requirements and generally look after me.

I’m greeted back in the compartment with a fairly simple customs form to complete. No gold, currency over $10000 or firearms to declare. The fun starts around midnight. My Azerbaijan e-visa is checked and taken away along with my passport. The drill is that we each have to attend an interview and have our photographs taken in a compartment down the train. When my turn comes it’s all going well to begin with and I’m invited to take a seat opposite the officer who will be deciding if I’m to be admitted. He has a massive plastic box on the table with his computer inside and a camera mounted on the top. It’s the sort of box that is indestructible and people use to transport very classified things. As he takes my photo and he speaks to me in a very polite way, with soft and precise English. At this point one of the carriage attendants appears round the door and chats to him whilst he types something inside his plastic box. They are talking about me, but I can’t work out quite why. I guess she tells him I’m that I’m a wealthy retired businessman, and more importantly in her mind, an English gentleman. He hands back my visa, and given what has been said, I can’t stop myself saying something silly like “are we done?”.

He looks at me very seriously after I have said this, and responds with just one word, “No”. Then the ‘Great Escape’ and ‘Columbo’ moment combined. Just one more question, ‘Have you been to Armenia?’. Of course I have, the stamps are there in my passport, but I look contrite and confirm to him that I have in fact been in Yerevan for a few days, but nowhere else. I dare not even say the words, but what he probably wants to know is that I have not visited Nagorno-Karabakh. My confession of having visited Armenia signals a change in approach and he gets out a notebook and starts taking my details down. I’m not sure if this is just theatre to intimidate me, or possibly something else more worrying. His boss arrives (five stars on his epaulettes, but I don’t think he’s a general) and is also incredibly polite. After a quick chat and a bit of staring at me, I’m eventually accepted as a tourist. A green stamp is added at the opposite end of my passport from my Armenian one. I’m in and allowed to return to my compartment where Gerrard is interested to find out why it has taken so long. Its his turn now, but I don’t think Iran poses as much of an issue on this particular border.

The final step is the customs man. He’s been tipped off I’m the only person in the carriage who has been to Armenia. My bags are all out and being inspected in the small space of the cabin. I don’t know what he’s looking for. When a Captain walks by I say ‘hello’ to her. She smiles and simply asks in good English if I have anything with me from Armenia. When I say ‘no’ its all over and the customs man leaves me alone to repack.

It should have been a comfy night on this train, but as is the way in the post Soviet empire, the air conditioning is deemed a bit decadent and switched off. I have learned that its pointless arguing about this. Better just to open the compartment door and a window in the corridor and let the air forced in by the speed of the train ventilate the otherwise sealed compartment.

By 07.00 I’m up and about. Gerrard snores gently, and I try not to wake him as I fold up and return my bedding. The carriage attendant fusses around me and makes me a cup of tea which is served with some boiled sweets. Outside the skies are dark and lightning streaks down on the oilfields and marshlands. We pass occasional settlements of mud huts with modern houses being built around them, a sign of the oil boom no doubt. Herds of goats tended to by their herdsman wander past nodding donkeys of an altogether different breed.

Things are going well until will stop at a place on the outskirts of Baku where the train stops and is declared officially broken. It takes about an hour to abandon the striken locomotive and get attached to a new one, and many people give up and leave the train here to find a bus.

We eventually arrive into Baku in the middle of the thunderstorm at around 10.30 am. A policeman helps me sort out a taxi and the need to find an ATM. I’m tired but content – another successful night on the rails. Then it occurs to me – this is my final objective – I have travelled from London to Baku, probably about 5500 km, in 19 days. It might not sound very far, but it has been a little complex in places, particularly in Turkey.

My journey ends here, but it is possible to take a ship across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan and onward east on the Silk Route. But the ferry no longer has any official timetable and takes more than two days to make the crossing. I note the possibility of using this route to circumnavigate the world by train and ship at a future date, but it would of course be much faster and easier to take the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok. I wonder why Phileas Fogg didn’t opt for this route? Even Michael Palin chose to head through the Gulf to India and Singapore..

I hope you have enjoyed reading about this journey. I will wrap up my learnings in a later post when I am back behind my desk in deepest West Sussex.

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 see a few people waiting, but there is no hustle and bustle here – presumably because there are only two or three trains a day, and it’s not exactly a commuter route taking a meandering nine hour journey over the border to Tbilisi. I speak with a young lady at the ticket counter, and as I had hoped, my train is due to arrive about 30 minutes before departure right outside the hall on platform 1, so I’m in the right place.

As I wander out onto the platform I see the carriages are being shunted onto our platform early. The 202 is the returning ‘Armenian’ 201 service from Batumi, and I recognise some of the crew straightaway. They don’t seem that pleased to see me, but I think that’s just a Soviet railway thing.

This is a summer only train, mainly scheduled to take Armenians to the Black Sea for their holidays. It’s a 16 hour ride to Batumi, but the route the train takes in the summer is still faster than the route in the off season. Lets be honest, this isn’t an ‘express’! The train heading this way is about half full, whereas the one I took coming from Batumi a few days ago was 100% full, as passengers are returning from their well earned summer break.

For this journey I have been able to secure a ticket in SV, first class, and I’m introduced to the lady who runs the single carriage of this type – No. 2 – on the train. Once she has verified I’m not a second class passenger sneaking in to the luxury of SV, I’m shown to a clean and comfy two berth compartment. Here I am dazzled by the extra set of gold net curtains, a pair of VIP slippers and an industrial quantity of fruit pastilles. It turns out I’m not going to have to share today, so I have space to relax and unwind. I like meeting people in shared compartments, but it’s also nice to have a break and a bit of solitude too. That is why I like crossing Siberia with my own compartment so much.

Once I have my gear stowed I hang around on the platform with the crew, and meet a few slightly mad fellow passengers. Nearly everyone is headed to Tbilisi. The timing of this train is such that I don’t really see it as a sleeper, even though I have a bed. Departing Yerevan at 15.30, our arrival in Tbilisi is scheduled for 00.12, so I have a hotel booked at the other end. What I do like about mid afternoon departures like this is that the scenery can be stunning and its good to see everything in daylight before the night draws in. That’s probably the reason it is not so busy – unless you are heading on to Batumi you could just buy a seat in coach. But this is £35 I’m happy to spend for the extra comfort today.

The driver eventually blows the engine whistle, and I’m ushered back on to the train – we set off right on time at 15.30. Other than a minor scuffle over the number of fruit pastilles permissible for a single first class passenger to consume, everything goes smoothly (FYI – it’s just one box). The toilet is kept very clean, the samovar works, and most amazingly the carriage has free wi-fi that seems very fast to me. This is a rail first, as I have actually assembled most of this post whilst on the train. I carry a very thin and light MacBook with me, and my photos can be transferred wirelessly onto it from my Fuji X-T20. I used to do this on my iPad, but now I use WordPress I like to have the full functionality of the OS X version and a decent keyboard.

Watching the desertified plains and rolling hills out the window (train travel cliche!), I eat my rations of a single meagre ham and cheese roll. The Armenians take their bread very seriously and its actually pretty tasty. I decide to take a tactical nap at around 19.00, as I want to be fresh and ready for the border games that will start later on, and there will be no chance to rest then.

Shortly after 21.00 an Armenian soldier dressed in full combats looks in to my compartment, switches on the main light and glances around. Maybe I’m too well camouflaged to be seen in my yellow t-shirt and gold scarf in a compartment completely furnished in shades of yellow and gold. Focussing in my direction he doesn’t seem to concerned to eventually spot me. He takes my passport and after a cursory check, hands it to his boss, who says a lot that of course I can’t understand. Maybe they have noted my special Armenian train camouflage technique?  There is no time for further debate though, as a smartly turned out immigration officer arrives in his dress uniform, complete with the computerised M&B 1980’s “Battleships’ game that is actually his mobile passport scanner. When he stamps my passport I thank him and he says that I’m very welcome. I only hope that these Armenian stamps don’t give me any trouble when I head for Azerbaijan in a few days time. You may well be aware that the direct border between these two countries is closed, which is why I’m headed back to Georgia as an intermediary.

A bit later on I’m visited by a serious man in blue overalls wearing rubber gloves. He’s the customs man, and he asks me a whole checklist of questions which culminate in his interest in cash, gold and firearms. I like to think I have an honest face, and after a while he marks my name off his list and goes back to searching other parts of the train.

We arrive in Tbilisi about 15 minutes late. Its not one of my favourite stations in the world, as the very high bridge between platforms has only stairs, and it’s a long, long, climb up with a 30 kilo bag. Outside I go through the usual taxi routine, and end up with a deal that’s inflated, but not so much as to lose sleep over. The driver looks both disappointed and offended at the same time that he’s only managed to get 20 Lari out of me. And so ends a long trip, my head hits the pillow at about 02.00am.

I’m here in Tbilisi for a few days before embarking on the final leg of this trip to Baku at the weekend.