Chai Chai, Biswanath Ghosh, 2009 – Of late have been reading several travel books and this was one of them. Thanks to this book I was introduced to the genre and Paul Theroux books (yet to read) that the author speaks very highly of. This book documents the author’s travels in Indian trains without any objective or destination in mind – travel for the sake of traveling.
There is however a sort of a common theme here – the author is fascinated by junction towns – the ones we all know and have heard of but with certainty have never gotten off at – towns like Itarsi, Jhansi, Mughal Sarai, Shoranur, Guntakkal, Jolarpettai and Arakonam. Generally these towns have nothing much to offer with their entire occupation centred around the station with food loaded to the trains or coaches getting cleaned.
You get a sense of the station itself, the hotels and shops that surround it, the people who make a living in and around the stations, an exploration of the town on foot to its non-railway heritage, if there is any, local food, a drink or two at the local watering hole getting pally with the local clientele at the bar and making friends. The language barrier and perhaps the lack of watering holes make some towns seem more boring than the others (Jolarpettai and Arakonam for eg.).
I would excuse this though as the book is entertaining otherwise and brought back memories of my trips from Chennai-Delhi in TN-Express and occasionally in Grand Trunk Exp. where I have come across some of these junctions like Jhansi and Itarsi and have seen the country, people, food and culture change every few hours. As a travel book I would think it achieved the objective. 7/10
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