828 Orvieto; Taking the Train; India by Rail

Growing up in the historic hill town of Orvieto, Andrea Vincente was surprised to hear that some of his neighbors have founded Truscan tombs beneath their cellars. Some people had those holes literally under their houses and never knew about that until archaeologists showed up and said, wait a minute. Coming up, we'll get an insider's view of Orvieto. Dan Richards prefers using trains instead of short-haul flights to get around Europe. It's much simpler and more direct. It's city to city. It's pretty much door to door if you're in Central Europe and that's a wonderful thing. While Monisha Rajesh found the train lines in India were ideal for reconnecting with the land her family came from. People who choose to travel by train are people who like to chat. They like to be around people. They like to travel as a community. Come along as we enjoy riding the rails and visiting one of the most enjoyable hill towns in Italy on today's Travel with Rick Steves. I think it's one of the most striking, memorable and enjoyable hill towns in all of central Italy. A guide from Orvieto tells us about his charming and historic home in just a minute. And we're having fun taking the train in the hour ahead. Authors Dan Richards and Monisha Rajesh explain why they'd rather take the train instead of a flight to get around in Europe and in India. As they'll explain, it's really the most convenient and convivial way to get to where you're going. Taking the freeway or the fast train north from Rome the first dramatic hill town you see is Orvieto. Sitting proudly on the natural fortification, its volcanic plateau or butte has provided since ancient times. Even the Pope used Orvieto as a place of last resort if ever Rome was sacked and he had to flee the Vatican. Today the city is a great chance to enjoy a classic hill town with more than its share of sights, activities and taste treats. We're joined now by Andrea Vicenti. He was born and raised in Orvieto and now earns his living as a tour guide in his home country of Italy. Andrea, thanks for being here. Thanks Rick, I'm honored to be here with you. Well, I'm honored to have you because you were raised and born in one of my favorite cities and I'd love to talk to somebody who just ran around there as a kid. You know, our sightseeing wonderland was your playground when you were a little boy. Exactly, and you don't think about it. You don't realize because you grew up in there and you think all the rest of the world is like that. People are flying all the way to you and taking their pictures and you go, what's going on? It's incredible. From my high school you can see the Duomo every day from a beautiful viewpoint, but I never realized until 20 years later after having done the high school I came back then and I say, wait, I mean, I've been here for five years, I could see that. It's really something special. And now you're taking people around. That is so cool. Now Orvieto is unique because it's a hill town, right? Yes. It's on a hill. And the whole idea is a hill town. Hill towns were necessary when there was no established country. When everything fell apart, then you need security within. Once you have a united Italy, you don't need a hill town anymore. Indeed. You don't need an army on the interior. Yes. In the centuries, Orvieto really was on a beautiful place because it's a butte. It's got a natural wall and you're on the very top of it. You get off the train and you see a funicular. Yes, exactly. It is a national fortress and it has been used as such for a long time, but never been conquered. And yes, to this day you can climb up from the railway station up with the funicular and arrive to the beautiful area where St. Patrick's well is. Yes. I love to think this was actually where the Pope would go when the barbarians were attacking Rome. Yes, exactly. And in fact, St. Patrick's well was built upon request of Clement VII in 1527 after the sack of Rome precisely because of that. So almost 500 years ago. Now, the St. Patrick's well, I got to say, it is mind blowing. It is what, 175 feet down, about 50 feet wide, 500 years old, two spiral staircases. Exactly. And what's the deal? The spiral staircase don't interchange? They never intercept each other. That's the brilliant idea that the architect had back then, the Sangallo architect. That was the groundbreaking introduction he made. So you go deep down in the ground and it's designed for going down with mules. So the stairs are gentle and long. Yeah, you got to literally go down for water. You go down for water exactly at the bottom of the well. There is still water that you can see. But for many years in the age when there was better defenses than offenses, the way of warfare was siege and you would just siege a town. And when it ran out of water, they gave up. So you have to have a well or you're toast. That was the idea when the Pope requested for it. Luckily it was never used for the purpose for which it was built. We walk all the way down there today and we don't think of what the practical problem would be if you only had one stairway and mules going both ways with their pottery jugs filled with water. Yeah, when it was made, the people at that time experienced it like people of New York right after the Empire State Building was built. It was something really, really shocking. The idea of going down and coming up without ever encountering anyone. I understand they even had a... It took so long to even mention this when something takes a long time to do. They say it's like digging St. Patrick's well. Yes, so so good. That's like if you're going to have to replace a whole thing, oh, that's a big job. That's a big job, yeah, exactly. Like digging St. Patrick's well. Like digging St. Patrick's well all over, see. One of my favorite views in the whole world is when you're really hot to hike down that spiral staircase and then look up 175 feet and you see that little bright circular light of the sky. Yes. And you feel so fresh and cool down there. Yes, it is. And it's still like that. It never gets old. I just loved it. But that's just the beginning of Orvieto. Now Orvieto is built on a volcanic sort of stone and it's honeycombed, isn't it? Yes. Underneath. As a child, did you look at underground Orvieto? Of course I did because every house has its own cellar underground. Almost every house has. And we still keep finding them out. As a little boy, you could have found a Traskin sarcophagi. Well, I didn't personally, but there are houses in which these things have happened because during the medieval times, these caves were sometimes used to ditch something that was old. And now we are retrieving those objects. To ditch something, yeah. But you should like a garbage dump. But you should like a garbage dump. But you should like a garbage dump. But you should like a garbage dump. Exactly. So I personally know some people had those holes literally under their houses and never knew about that until archaeologists showed up and say, wait a minute, there's something interesting. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's stop. Stop. I want to look at that. And sometimes it's complicated when that happens. It's a 500 year old garbage. Yeah, exactly. Somebody's broken belt down there or a piece of shoe or something like that. This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with Andrea Vicente. And he was born and raised in one of my favorite cities in Italy, Orvieto. Two hours north of Rome. And if you're heading from Rome to Florence and you want to give yourself a little extra treat, just take a left turn off the freeway and you got it. One thing I love to do is to walk around the cliffs of Orvieto. It's on that, what is the volcanic stone called? The volcanic stone is called Tuffo in Italian. Tuffo. Tuffa. I call it Tuffo. I like that. The cool thing about Tuffo, if I understand correctly, is it's easy to carve until it hits the oxygen and then it gets hard. Yes. So if you're carving away, it's very easy and then you come back tomorrow and it's going to be stable. Yes. Yes. It's a spongy stone, very, very useful for building, in fact, the whole city of Orvieto is made with that stone. Do you know the Boutai farm across the valley? Of course, yes. The Ticilius place. The Ticilius place, yeah. For years I went to her family farm and it's just a big nice farm. And she took me through just a simple door in her kitchen and there's stairs that go down and we get this wonderland of centuries old cut into the stone passageways and that's where they stack all their wine. Exactly. I believe her cellar actually was begun by the Etruscans in miracle correctly, so we go back 25 centuries. So these Etruscans, you hear that word? I mean, for what? Before Christ, like 700 years. 700 years. This was a Truscan civilization. Yes. And you'll find Etruscan tombs. In my very early days of tour guiding, I found this, I was going to say I discovered it. Well, it's been there for 3000 years, but on the tomb of the Hescanus family and some farmer just found it in his backyard. And I would park my little bus there and walk my groups back and he would light up a lantern and we'd step into this tomb and it really must have been from 500 BC or something like that. Yes, that's the age. And we could see that the faded frescoes on the wall and what we know about the Etruscans, which was quite an amazing civilization. Absolutely. It's just what we've learned from excavating their tombs. That's what we know about it. That's almost everything we have from that civilization. There's a great Etruscan museum in Rome. There's a great Etruscan collection in the Vatican Museum in Rome. And there's an equally great Etruscan museum right in Orvieto. Indeed. It's really beautiful. It's an important place to see. So I love to walk with a group all the way across town to that way on the far side of this hill town, you can imagine. You run out of place to walk. You're just on the top of the cliff on the opposite side. And then you look out and you see this wonderful view. You see the fertility of the land, the olives and the vineyards and the fruit trees. You see cypress trees. They're so romantic and dramatic, marking a cemetery. And then in the distance, you see this Mount Cetona. And I understand that marks the end of Tuscany. So when I stand there and I look down at the natural fortification provided by this cliff and I look at how the people have augmented that with their own rampart. And then I look up there at that mountain and I think beyond that is Tuscany. And I'm in Umbria. Exactly. Now that's not a big deal today, Umbria and Tuscany, but a thousand years ago that was a difference. That would mean a lot. What would it mean? It would mean that actually Mount Cetona that now marks the southern Tuscany border would mark a state border back then. A state border. The state of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany compared to the Pontifical state of which Orvieto was my understanding was that was like a cultural divide. It was the Holy Roman Empire in Tuscany and north and the Vatican states in Umbrian south. There have been obviously many, many, many complicated. But we could say especially over the last centuries that the difference is that Tuscany became a Grand Duchy under Florence under the Medici, the very famous, and instead Orvieto was dragged, let's say, by the Pontifical state culture which is less in favor of entrepreneurs of creativity is more conservative, should we say. So this is why to this day. That's a polite way to say it, isn't it? I tried my best. That's good. If you're in the realm of the Pope, you would have a more authoritarian society. It's an aristocratic society. And if you're in the realm of the Medici and so on, it would be a little more businessman and creative and stuff. Exactly. When we're in Orvieto, by the way, this is travel with Rick Steves and I'm just getting carried away because I'm talking with Andrea Vicente. He was born and raised in one of my favorite cities, Orvieto, just two hours north of Rome. One thing I love about Orvieto is in the evening when the sun goes down and everybody comes out. Yes. In Italy, especially in a hill town. Yes. Especially after a real hot day. It's cool, the tourists are gone. Now you can just come out, take a breath, you've made your money. It's a ritual. And you just, you meet your neighbors. Yes. And then choose your restaurant. Let's see if I was going to come and visit you and we wanted to eat. We do the passeggiato up and down the main street. And then you'd say, Rick, what do you feel like eating? And I'd say Andrea, what should I feel like eating? What are the specialties? From Orvieto is, I would say pork meat for sure. Umbre is the only region of the area that has no contact with the sea. So the pork meat is particularly famous, famous especially in Umbre. And it's made in many ways, of course, pasta. Many different kinds of pasta and porketta and of course the truffles. Needless to say, everybody goes for truffle hunting. Truffle hunting. Okay, so I could, depending on the season, because you would want me to eat, you would want me to have a zero kilometer meal. Of course. And you'd want me to eat with the seasons. Yes. And then we'd wash it down with, would we get some nice California wine? Well, only if you bring it from California. And I would suggest to start with the local Orvieto, which is the local wine. It has the same, it bears the same name of the town. It's the only DOCG production that's called... Orvieto Classico. Yes, it's Orvieto Classico. That's the one you would use. There's so much about Orvieto. Yes. And our time is up. Our time is already up. Our time is up. But we can always put it on the next trip. Till next time. Andrea, thank you so much and bon voyage. Grazie. Thank you, Ulrich. Ciao. Ciao. Andrea Vincente's website is andreavincente.com and that's V-I-N-C-E-N-T-I. We also place guitar on occasion with the Orvieto-based band Bartender at weddings and venues around central Italy. A pair of British train enthusiasts are with us next on Travel with Rick Steves. Monisha Rajesh tells us how much she enjoyed exploring India by rail in just a bit. But first, Dan Richards gets us started on the train lines of Europe, where a slower overnight train can be just the ticket for getting to your next destination. British author Dan Richards sees it, Europe built trains, America built highways and regret. At least that's the title of a guest essay Dan wrote for the New York Times to describe how taking a train can be the most practical, civilized and enjoyable way to get from one European city to another, especially on a relaxed overnight sleeper train. Dan's back with us on Travel with Rick Steves to look at how the underfunded U.S. transportation system is veering off from the futuristic plans of other first world nations. Dan, thanks for being here and thanks for reminding us that trains are a good option. My pleasure. Yes, I'm a big one for trains. So will you live in England? And of course England now can be connected with the continent with what a 17 minute train ride under the English Channel in the tunnel. There's quite a romance of train travel in Europe and night travel in Europe. Talk about the romance of a night train in Europe. Well it's very much in the culture. I mean I love it so much that it's in Agatha Christie. Poirot is always on the night train and Georges Simonon's Magre is always travelling across France to the scene of a crime on the night train and it just becomes normal that you can get these trains that perhaps you have a good meal in one city and then you go and you get on the sleeper train, you get a bunk, you go to sleep and you awake in a different country and a different city and you can have breakfast there. I mean what could be more civilized than that? I love it. I really love it. I'm just listening to you and I'm smiling because back in my year rail days, you know when we were backpacking and staying in youth hostels and eating breakfast leftovers for lunch, a night train was a real blessing. You avoid the cost of a hotel, you save a whole day in your itinerary by travelling while you sleep and you have that fun experience of being groggy and kind of stiff and waking up and stumbling off of the train in a whole different culture, a whole different language, a whole different world. A lot of times you'll cross the continental divide in Europe going from Germany to Italy or something like that. There's something kind of timeless about it and you enjoy the rhythm of the rails, you enjoy storms out the window, you even enjoy being woken up in the middle of the night at a border or something like that. It's kind of an adventure, isn't it? It's great and then also I think it's good for the soul because you're going through landscape, you're seeing the landscape change. The night is not always dark, there might be a beautiful moon and then you see the mountains you're travelling through or you see the fjords wherever you are. You know, it's not isolated, you're not in a little bubble, you might be in your cabin when you're asleep but there might be a bar on the train, there might be a restaurant car, there might be seated cars so you get to meet strangers, you get to have conversations and that again just, you know, feels so civilized. I don't even need the bar, I just was standing up in the aisle, you know, where you've got the windows and those little fold down seats and it was a full moon night and it was, this is a long, long time ago and I fell in love with a girl from the Czech Republic going from Prague to Budapest back during communism under a full moon looking out the window. I don't know what happened to that but these kind of things happen when you let yourself be charmed in an overnight train ride under a full moon looking out the window in the aisle. Exactly and it's so filmic and I think it's interesting, you know, Alfred Hitchcock, he often has the sleeper trains in his films and their ways and you know, they're in James Bond, they're all in all of these, I suppose there's a great sense of, you know, it's something on the bucket list, you know, it's something you would want to do and at the same time people do it habitually just to get around Europe. There is a specialness to it but there's also an availability, it's quite egalitarian and it's a really efficient way of getting around. No, it was a kind of an irony that as trains got faster and Europe was covered with a whole web of bullet trains, what used to be an overnight train ride was now just a four hour ride and you wouldn't do it overnight. If you're an enthusiast for overnight rides, you almost look for a slower connection or you have to recalibrate what cities you can connect overnight but now I understand overnight train rides are back on the rise. They are, I think people are keen to avoid flying if they can help it, you know, there's that flag scam which is that almost flight shame which is I think a word from Scandinavia that's come in. That's a Swedish word isn't it, yeah, flight shame and it's true, if you take a plane for a short ride, you're creating far more carbon than if you just hop on a train and these days when you think about the time it takes to get from Hamburg to Berlin, you could fly but just as fast you could take the train. Exactly because I mean my experience of flying is hardly ever delightful whereas my experience of catching trains often is. I mean today I travel down from Edinburgh to London where I'm speaking to you now and then tomorrow I'm getting a Euro star from London, St. Pancras, I'm going to Paris and then I'm going to Strasbourg in Germany after that. It isn't a night train but Europe is very much connected and I could fly but I'd have to leave my house and go to an airport which is pretty much a large shopping mall where I don't want to be with a runway attached and then I go in a plane and I don't probably talk to that many people because you're belted in and then you don't see any of the landscape, you might see some mountains from above and then you land, you have no real sense of where you are because the airport looks just like the one you've just left and then you have to travel to where you actually want to be but with a train, it's city to city, it's pretty much door to door if you're in central Europe and that's a wonderful thing. And the train stations are very welcoming these days and they're just gleaming and efficient and fun, the trains are comfortable, the trains are much faster than they used to be. Often electric so you're not burning any fossil fuel which is great. And they're much more green, yeah so if you care about the environment, if you like to see the, do a little sightseeing as you travel and if you want to meet people, there's a lot of cases to be made for taking the train in other times might be a flight. You know a good example would be Barcelona to Madrid and the old days you flew, I don't know anybody who flies now, you take the train. London to Paris, why would you fly? It's two and a half hours by train isn't it? Yeah and it's a very pleasurable experience and I think still we have the slight novelty of the channel tunnel. I was just at the St. Pancras train station in London and that's where the new terminal is for the bullet train under the English Channel to Paris and the Brussels. Man, it's busy and it's just, I would imagine it's really dented the air traffic from London to Paris. Well hopefully I think everything needs to be competitive and in fact Europe is bringing in laws to kind of limit short haul flights if there's a rail option which I think can only be good. You mean Europe is legislating green travel options? That's right. Isn't that a concept I can't imagine in this country we're almost legislating against green travel options these days. Well I think there's a difference in Europe and perhaps in China and perhaps other places where rail is preeminent, the people who are taking the decisions actually use the services whereas in the States I can't imagine that anybody in a position of power is ever actually getting the train. Isn't that interesting? Well that just reminded me I was in Guatemala complaining about the infrastructure, the terrible roads in Guatemala and they told me well all the rich people have their own helicopters so they don't need roads and there's a society that is really gone off the deep end as far as the gap between rich and poor and the lack of middle class and infrastructure that is ignored for people who are elites and just can fly over it. Well I think it's such a sadness in the States because you have these fly over States as they're referred to and at a time when there's quite a polarizing conversation being had or perhaps not had in the States, wouldn't it be good if you were able to travel across the States and meet people who you might not agree with at first but you could have a cup of coffee with them, you could have a beer with them on the train and you could actually find some common ground whereas if you're flying the whole time you're in this little bubble and you're only going where you want to go, you're not meeting anybody from in between. You're going from Los Angeles to New York or from Miami to San Francisco, yeah you're flying over all the people we should be talking to and all the beautiful terrain we should be appreciating. Absolutely and if you're in a car you know you're self-directed, there's nothing really that's going to go wrong you hope so you're just getting from A to B. Isn't it kind of baked in because I mean I don't know what your perspective is in Europe but Europe grew up around train lines and America invested in highways instead. It's true but you used to have a wonderful network of railways which I think when people are travelling by planes and when they're travelling by cars you're going to get those two major lobbies for whom I suppose the railways in the 50s and 60s they could compete a bit but in the 70s they really went downhill and that's because again the decision makers they didn't factor it in, they didn't really understand the joys of it I suppose and I think America could reinvent itself as China has with having these very fast trains that can compete with the aeroplanes and be a lot better for the environment. Dan Richards befriends the world of night workers in his latest book called Overnight, Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark. He's also written the Beechwood Airship interviews and Outposts and Dan follows his trailblazing Great Great and Dorothy's mountaineering adventures in climbing days. His website is danrichards.uk. So Dan you mentioned China, it really is interesting because there's so much going on with competition between the powerful economic centres on this planet, the United States, Europe and China and I know Europe is investing in its bullet trains and I know the United States is investing in fossil fuel related things. What is the news from China as far as transportation infrastructure goes? Well China's amazing progress is profoundly impressive. About 30 years ago they weren't really in the picture and since then there's been a huge amount of investment, there's been this very clear vision of what they want and they have linked nearly all of their major cities now with a network of super fast trains that are very affordable and mean that people can get around without having to fly and I know that one of the big talking points or certainly parroted views in the States is that the United States is too large for railways to make an impact. You have flights, people fly, it's not a problem but in some ways it is a problem, it's a problem for the environment, it's a problem potentially socially and you were talking about Guatemala earlier, you know the haves can fly in their helicopters, they can fly in their planes and the super haves in America, you know they can fly in their rockets and that's great but a whole section of society is potentially being left in the dust and part of that is that infrastructure for those who drive and those who take the current trains is quite profoundly poor and the solution has always been to build more roads and the idea of building new train lines is often comes into conflict with this idea of oh well America's too big but to actually have the vision to think well what if we have a look at what China's doing, what if we build railways like we've never known on the continent before that are incredibly fast, 300 kilometers an hour that would cut your journey time between major cities to something that could really compete with airlines, they could be electric, they could take very short routes through tunnels where you had major land masses in the way, this is the sort of thinking that gets you a new result as opposed to potentially what's been happening in the past where people have been trying the same thing over and over. Isn't the fundamental thing moving the masses rather than just finding expensive luxury travel for the elites, I mean we've got 350 million people or something like that, China's got a billion people or something like that, is China actually moving their masses on rails? They absolutely are, I mean people are using the trains, part of that is the frequency of the services, it's not like you'd be waiting hours for a train, trains are coming every 15 minutes and sometimes less. That's what's fundamentally different in the United States if you miss your train, come back tomorrow. Absolutely. In Europe, sometimes I'll stand on a bench and I'll watch the train coming through and if it's too crowded I know there's another one in half an hour, I'll just have a cup of coffee and get on the less crowded train coming in half an hour, it's a whole different approach determined really or made possible by priorities in infrastructure and investment. You may have seen Dan Richards guest opinion column for the New York Times on what America is missing by not investing in more passenger trains. Dan also posts on Instagram at dan underscore zip and we have links to his earlier appearances in our travel with Rick Steves show archives. Dan, in your New York Times piece you wrote about some of these innovative kind of seductive new visions by American futurists and mega wealthy and elites, supersonic news, tunnels underneath Las Vegas. Tell us about some of these innovations and these attempts to modernize our infrastructure. I think it goes back to just what you were saying, moving the elites. A lot of these ideas are potentially flashes in the pan for people to get around who are in the 1%. There's an idea to bring back supersonic aircraft in the style of Concorde and I think their capacity is 68 people. That's not going to move America and also the prices I imagine will mean that a large amount of Americans will be priced out of even attempting to engage with this. The idea of building tunnels for cars has happened under Los Angeles. That's a less efficient metro by any metric. The solutions I think are often hiding in plain sight but railways and the states seem to have a bad rap and part of that is the fact that if you defund something, if it is low down on your list of priorities for improvement, for funding or for even just to consider, it's inevitable that the people who use them, there will be less services, the services will be older, the services will be run down and then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that you have an embarrassing railway network. Whereas China was in that situation 30 years ago and through clarity of vision, large funding and support at the highest levels, they've managed to build a world beating infrastructure, a rail infrastructure that's able to move China and they didn't let the distance, they didn't let the gestical problems get in the way of the vision. They didn't let the elites shape the infrastructure. I think a good metaphor is cities will oftentimes tear down a stadium not because it doesn't accommodate the masses better but because it lacks the VIP boxes that the elites really demand and that would be I think related to people who look for transportation breakthroughs via concords that can seat 60 people. It's just sort of an indicator of who's calling the shots, who's got the money and who's got the power. Absolutely. I think we already have layer jets. Now we're going to have supersonic layer jets. Well that's super if you habitually travel by layer jet. Right. When you're getting on a train I think in a few hours to head over from London to Europe, tell us what you're looking forward to as you enjoy using today's train network in Europe and how that might have been different from a generation ago. Well a couple of generations ago you could have got the boat train from London which is I mean this is the stuff that you read about in Sherlock Holmes and perhaps you PG Woodhouse and all of the 1930s things that's in Agatha Christie. So you'd get the fast train to the coast and then you would the train itself might be put on a ship that would go over the weather allowed. I remember lots of times waiting for the storm to pass on that English Channel crossing. Yes. And then the train would get to the other side hopefully and then you'd hopefully get to Paris. Dogs would sniff you at the border. Yeah absolutely and a lot of that's been done away with of course by the channel tunnel. It's the most wonderful infrastructure project that was built by the British and the French in Antoine Cordial and it works incredibly well so you're in Paris within two, two and a half hours. It's two and a half hours from Big Bend to the Eiffel Tower, 17 minutes under the English Channel, 10 departures a day for like a hundred dollars. It's amazing. It's the most amazing thing and now it's strange because I still think it's a wonderful, wonderful thing but people I think just they don't see it anymore. They take it for granted which you know shows it's working in a way and then you get to Paris and you change stations so maybe you'll get the metro or you could walk if you have the time and then I'm going off to Strasbourg and I'm going on a walking holiday in the Black Forest which is I believe something you've covered on your show. In Strasbourg that means crossroads and with that kind of investment in infrastructure everything is a crossroads. That is so inspiring. Dan Richards thanks so much for joining us. Have a good train trip tomorrow and we'll look forward to talking to you again soon. My great pleasure. Lovely to speak to you. I would like to welcome you to this show. There's more about Dan Richards with today's show at ricksteves.com. Monisha Rajesh takes us on the trains of India. That's next on Travel With Rick Steves. One reason I tell people that India is my favorite travel destination has a lot to do with its trains. Even though it was decades ago I still have vivid memories of cinders from the steam train mingling with the sweat and the bugs squished on my arm and each stop became a parade of India as people flooded on and off the train. A few years ago British journalist Monisha Rajesh took four months to ride 80 trains to reach the farthest corners of India's rail system. Her book Around India in 80 Trains was a critical success. She also writes about passenger lines in Europe, Asia and North America in Around the World in 80 Trains. And Monisha explores night trains in her latest title Moonlight Express. Monisha, welcome back to Travel With Rick Steves. Thank you for having me. Now you're from a family of Indian heritage but you were born and raised in Britain, right? Yes, I was born and grew up in the UK and I moved to India very briefly when I was nine in 1991. My parents tried to move back to Chennai. It was Madras at the time. We lasted a couple of years and then went back to the UK. And it was only 20 years later that I decided to go back to India and just visit it as a tourist. Yeah, now I understand that you're a journalist and you were going to write an article about Indian cities and air travel and you ended up writing about train travel, is that right? Yeah, I wanted to go back to India and kind of reassess my relationship with it I suppose because I'd left when I was a kid with not a great sort of taste in my mouth and I wanted to just kind of reset that. And I knew I wanted to go out to India, meet young Indians, find out what the country was really like and just get under the skin of it. And I realized very quickly that the best way to do that was via the railways. It just allowed me to come into contact with people, chat to people and get first hand stories in a way that no other method of transport would. Well let's talk first about this great network because it is, I mean there's good and bad parts of a colonial legacy I suppose. And one thing India, can you say is blessed with, is an amazing train system? It is, yes. And it is one of those tricky things where apologists for empire will say, but we gave you the railways. And it wasn't a gift, it wasn't benevolent from the point of view. I know, it was probably used to move natural resources out of India. Pretty much used for plunder, looting, cotton, iron and Indians weren't even allowed to ride on them despite having funded them. But you know there is this network that's more than 65,000 kilometers of track. And the trains, express trains, mail trains, steam trains, luxury trains, they get into every nook and cranny of the country, northeast, south and west in a way that no airline will ever get you. And it's very tricky to drive too. You wrote in your book that you spent four months and you traveled 40,000 kilometers, that would be 24,000 miles, cut it in half and add 10%. And you mentioned that that was about the circumference of the earth and you drank about a thousand cups of sweet tea. And what a great way to sample India. And you wrote that you actually, what was that in 2010, you lost your heart to the Indian railways. So tell us about how you were so enamored and romanced by the clickety-clack and the incredible crowds and the humanity of India pouring into each train. How did that steal your heart? You know just hearing you talk about it, I can feel myself smiling. I love it. It just, it warms me straight away thinking about it. Indian railways is a microcosm of India. It really is because you have eight classes on board the main trains. Eight classes? Eight classes, yeah. And you can go from first class up at the top where you've got politicians and business travelers, right down to the bottom where you've got general class with fruit sellers, laborers, everybody crammed in on slats and everybody in between. Wait a minute, general class on slats. I remember that. Wooden slats. General class on wooden slats and people teaming in there and at every stop, every stop is like a fantasy with the people who don't intend to be on that train knowing they've got eight minutes here to get on that train and see if they can entertain and make a few pennies. Yeah, and they're still there and they're still doing it. And yet Indian railways has absolutely developed and evolved and they now have panoramic dome cars called vista dome carriages. They've got these new van, they borrow at speed trains, but they still have the old ones because your everyday average Indian traveler can't afford all the fancy new trains and they still service everybody from top to bottom. So those clackety old trains that you still remember and the old toy trains with the smut coming off that comes on your arms, they're still there up in the hill stations. They're still there, good. Yeah. Well, you know, we have to remember class distinctions are built into Indian society like we can hardly imagine. And there's nowhere else that you see it than on the train so vividly. Because I remember being treated like a top class as a Western tourist and a train station would feel like a teaming refugee camp after some kind of disaster to me. And then the sea would part and I would be ushered right up to the VIP ticket office and I would be treated like I was a different species almost and I thought, wow, this is a way of life in India. Very much so. I mean, an Indian platform is just, it's delicious for a journalist because you've got everything happening all the time. You're constantly watching little dramas unfold. You can hear what people are saying about just everyday occurrences. You can see it all, you can hear it all, you can feel it all and then you get on board and you've got it all around you. And you wrote that a train ticket is like permission to trespass on the intimacies of other people's lives. Yeah, it is. And the best bit is people don't mind. And they do it back. They do it back to you and it's very much a two way thing where, I mean, you can't travel on an Indian train if you're an introvert in any way. And that goes with a, there's a sort of every culture as a kind of social distance, right? I mean, in Norway you have a different social distance than what we're comfortable with in the United States or in India. And in India, people can sit on your laps and not invade your privacy. I've had people put their babies on my lap through a window. I've seen that. Here, hold my baby. I can't get on the train, but I'm going to scramble her on this other way. And if I don't make it, I might be on the rooftop. Yeah, here's the baby. Save a seat for me and I'll come round with the bags. Yeah, it's everything goes, everything goes there. And I love that. I love the fact that it's not just that you end up being trusted, but people are very trusting of you innately again. And again, this is something that's really unique to train travel. That is unique. You're all working together. As soon as she said that I said, well, that's the same all over when I'm on a train. We're all on this train together. This takes us, we're all going to the same place. We're all stuck in this car. We all wish it was a little more comfortable, but we're all in this together. We're going to get it. And if we have the right attitude, we'll bring some memories out of it. This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with Monisha Rajesh. She's written a book called Around India in 80 Trains. She's also written Epic Train Journeys and she's written a new book called Moonlight Express around the world by Night Train. To learn more about Monisha's travels and her work, her website is Monisha Rajesh.com that's spelled R-A-J-E-S-H. Yeah, you do have to have a special attitude to fully appreciate and enjoy train travel, especially in India. Yeah, I think with train travel, you do have to have a certain kind of attitude. You have to be an extrovert. And I think the people who choose to travel by train are people who like to chat. They like to be around people. They like to travel as a community. I think it's very rare that you will find somebody who is averse to conversation or wants to be as an individual, just kept quiet. And the great thing about India is English is the universal language of travel and business in this subcontinent, which is linguistically as diverse as Europe, I think. But you've got to have one language that works all across the board and that would be English. So you will not find much of a language barrier, I do not think, while traveling by train in India. No, you're right. And that's why I was able to do the book with such ease, because no matter where I went, people spoke English. And even though I can read and write Hindi, I don't speak it brilliantly. So I was able to read station names. But even if someone wasn't fluent, somebody else would be. And you're in the fray, you know, and you can communicate with people. And after a few days of train travel in India, you realize you've got to stick up for yourself too. And you realize that you're in the density of population that you won't incur in the United States or in Europe. I remember, and tell me if this is an experience you've had in the struggle for a ticket in a ticket line, and there's these sweet little frail looking ladies that are actually dynamos and very strong and very aggressive. And I'm a big tall white guy, and they're just busting through me. And finally I go, okay, this is, that was the great equalizer. Now I'm going to stick up for my spot in line here. And I would put my arm down on the railing, and nobody's getting by me until I get my ticket. And it worked. But there was this, at the same time, it was kind of a fun jostling. And it's just a way of life that I was not used to in Europe. I think the word you said there was fun is absolutely spot on. It's not aggressive. It's not ill meaning. Everyone's got elbows out, they're all pushing. But it's very, very short lived. It is short lived. It's weird. It's charming. It's lovely actually. It's oddly charming. And Monisha, you traveled 40,000 kilometers in India on the train. Just share with us a few of the glimpses of Indian culture that you enjoyed either on the train or looking out the window as you traveled. I think one of my favorite things is the sing-alongs. And I got this on the Dajiling toy train, which is a seven hour journey up the hills. And people will start singing a Bollywood song, and then the whole carriage is going. And it was just one of those things that happened wherever I went. Now you said hills. I remember hill stations when all over India, not just up in the Himalayas in the north, but there are ranges of hills that take you out of the heat and the intensity of the low country. And people who have the wherewithal to escape, they take the train. Is that what you mean by the hills up into a hill station? Yes. So the hill stations, again, the legacy of the British, were built to basically escape to the cooler climbs. And the hill stations now where the trains still run are Dajiling. And then there's a train from Kalkata Shimla as well, and also one in the south from Utti to Metapaliam. Oh, you know, I just thought of one of my most beautiful experiences and memories in India. And it's a kind of, it's similar to a train ride, but it's a boat ride up the, some beautiful inner passage in Kerala. Do you know that? Did you ever do that? Alopee on the back quarters. Yeah, the backwaters. And it went from village to village like a train. And I sat on the roof of the boat. It was like a little post boat or something like that going from town to town and communes coming on and going. And I just was observing this constant parade of idyllic, magical Indian society in my favorite province of India, Kerala, K-E-R-E-L-A. Yeah, I love Kerala. It's one of the greenest, loveliest, most lush states in the country. It's usually where I end up after I finished a big journey in India. I just go to kind of relax and calm. So with using the, this train network that was an inheritance of the British colonial age, you can actually get a train pass, can't you? I believe you had a 90 day rail pass for about $500. Oh, but you said that's no longer available. It's not available anymore, which is quite sad. So it was 90 days, $540. And that was in 2010. And that included all my sleeper trains at second class and quite a lot of my food. So it was a bargain. So now how do you do it? Is there a train pass or you just buy tickets as you go? Do you get tickets online? Just buy tickets as you go and everything's online now. Everything's digitized. You can't even get those lovely printed out tickets with serrated edges in different colors for each region. Can you buy an upper class ticket and venture into the lower classes just for your own fun? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, you can still do that. I think that would be a lot. You can still do what you want on Indian trains. Yeah, it's not as regimented as German, I don't think. No, no, not still. The first book Monisha Rajesh wrote in 2012 was Around India in 80 Trains. Her latest title is Moonlight Express Around the World by Night Train. She's joining us on travel with Rick Steves from her home base in London. So tell us a little more about the eight classes that you might choose from. Oh wow, again, that depends on what you want. So first class, air conditioned, two private births, a hard door that actually pulls across and locks. Then you've got two AC, which is, again, air conditioned second class, but you have four births and a sort of material curtain that goes across the corridor, and then two births on the other side. So it's still open, but you've got more privacy and tinted windows so you can't really see what's going on outside. And then third class is six births and it's not air conditioned. I mean, one is air conditioned, then there's a third class that is air conditioned, one isn't, one is. And then it sort of moves down to sort of general and then sitting class and then check. I mean, it's all split up so much into complex little ways, but it just depends what journey you're doing. So if you're doing an hour, you're fine in general class. You can just sit on the regular seats, look out the window. If you're doing a 48 hour journey, I would say travel in two AC. First class if you want, but you don't really get all the fun and the interaction. You're very closed off from people. And I know a lot of first timers to India prefer that. It's not for me. I like to chat to everyone. I like to see what's going on. The irony, if you spend more money, think you're going to get more experience. You're absolutely wrong. Counter-intuitively spending more money brings you out of the joy of India and into a world filled with people who spent more money so they wouldn't have to be there. I think that's a kind of a harsh way to put it, but I think your two AC would be a good compromise for that. But always remember you can venture into the other classes and you will be part of the party instead of observing it from a distance. I have fond memories of food in the stations. What's your advice for eating in the stations? For one thing, fast turnover means safer food for the Western traveler. It does. Some of the trains are very, very well known for what they call pantry cars. And they have dining cars on board. You can't sit in them, but they have everything cooked fresh on board. And then the hawkers come through and sell it to you. And it's all the hot, deep fried food is the safest food to have. It's cooked then and there. It's cooked in front of you. You're very safe. They're thinking about on the platform, but actually on the train, they have these pantry cars and then they bring it around or you didn't order it. They're bringing it or do you actually order it? Then they bring it to you. No, they just bring it. They bring it and it's great fun because you'll see them come up with a basket and they'll be yelling. And you have one of those. So look at two of those. Yeah. And so you lift up the thing and see what have you got there. Oh, chicken lollipops. Yep. I'll have a couple of them. Oh, hot samosas. Have one of them. Chicken biryani. I'll have a pot of that. It's great fun because you never know what's coming. Tell me more. Do more of that. I'm closing my eyes and imagining this beautiful, steaming food. Tell me more. Tell me more. Well, but the other fun thing is that certain stations are renowned for certain hawkers who are there and passengers around you will tell you. The next station, this guy does really great deep fried samosas, hop off and get them when we get there. And people will dart off, grab them and come back. This is travel. Oh, I love it. And that would be what you write about in your book Around India in 80 Trains. We've been talking with Monisha Rajesh and her website is monishirajesh.com. That's R-A-J-E-S-H. And Monisha, you have really stoked my travel wanderlust. I want to somehow get back on those trains in India and enjoy the unforgettable experience of exploring one of the most fascinating countries in the world on one of the greatest train systems in the world. Thanks, Monisha. Thank you for having me. Happy travels. You can listen to Monisha Rajesh's earlier visit with us about riding night trains around the world. It's in the travel with Rick Steves show archives from last January. It reminded a listener named Mary about an unforgettable train trip of her own in India. She wrote us this comment in our radio travel forum at ricksteves.com. Mary writes, I just love listening to Rick visit with Monisha Rajesh about the wonders of train travel. One of my favorite experiences was when my husband and I worked in the Arctic of Russia and traveled from St. Petersburg to Helsinki on a Russian train. We literally had the first class car all to ourselves, a gorgeous car, an equally gorgeous Samovar and a conductor who checked our passports every 30 minutes. Something we'll never forget. Another travel highlight for me was taking an overnight sleeper train from Agra in India to Bikaner. The train was late, of course, but so very well worth the wait. I ended up in a car with the most beautiful family from Uttar Pradesh who were traveling around their stunning country. I immediately became friends with the two teenage daughters when I offered them chocolate bars. We never slept, enjoying one another's company too much and greeted the sun together with the calls of the train's chai vendor, offering the most exquisite chai I had ever tasted. We continue to communicate, feel WhatsApp regularly, and are planning a reunion when the girls finish university. If you ever have a chance to take a train to Bikaner, don't pass it up. Friendships in a beautiful station are awaiting you. You can add your comments to what Mary has written about what you hear on Travel with Rick Steves by posting to the listener travel forum at ricksteves.com slash radio. Travel with Rick Steves is produced by Tim Tatton, Kaz Murrahall and Donna Bardsley at Rick Steves Europe and Edmunds Washington. Affiliate relations are by Sheila Gershawf. Website uploads are by Andrew Wakeling and Sherry Court. Our theme music is by Jerry Frank. Special thanks to the BBC in London for studio help this week. We'll look for you next week with more Travel with Rick Steves. Hey I'm Rick Steves. Thanks for listening. In our online travel store you can choose from 80 different Rick Steves guidebooks covering just about every country, region and major city in Europe as well as books on history, art, Italian food, cruising and festivals plus phrase books and planning maps. You'll find my favorite bag, the one I designed and I live out of for 100 days a year and a selection of other custom designed bags, backpacks and wheeled bags big and small plus a selection of accessories that experienced travelers won't leave home without. It's all at ricksteves.com. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 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