Skip to main content

More views from trains while on Hollyday

Many a trip to me is a pilgrimage of sorts - the religion being curiosity.  Some throw curveballs and are rather exhausting in their execution simply because the destination happens to be rather remote.  But making the most of the journey (to harp on an oft harped cliche) does add flavor to the experience.

So here are some more of these exotically intoxicating and 'holier than thou' (you will figure out what I mean) adventures...

We start in New Zealand on the north eastern coast of the south island (the country has two main islands - north and south) and travel along the eastern edge hugging the Pacific.


Departure from PICTON NZ

Through tunnels and down the coast to Christchurch 



Few hours north from NZ, crossing the equator and you are in the tiny island country of Singapore..

Neat and tidy this once Victorian trading post and gateway to the riches of Asia is now a well oiled business machine.  
Hanging out at the local Disneyland look alike..rode the monorail till it felt monotonous

No Dhobi (washerman) to be seen at this MRT train station


Switching continents we enjoyed some quality clickety clack time in the Andes in Peru, one spring (or I guess their fall)...


Inca Rail traveling downhill along the Urubamba river to Olantetambo


And then onto India where the Brits using labor imported from all different parts of the world including Japan invested in the steel ribbons to move goods around and make em profits for the crown back home..

One of my journeys took me across the Pamban Bridge in south eastern India to the holy shirne of Rameshwaram - my interest was to cross the only open sea rail crossing on what is called the Palk Strait.  2 km in length and a 100 years old when I crossed it in 2015 it was then and still is an amazing engineering feat.

the rails over the water - Pamban bridge

Cantilever portion of the railway bridge as seen from the road bridge
Rameshwaram temple -Well- I could not get myself to enjoy the Holly - nor take it with me - instead preferring to say my prayer (for not being lost or killed in the line of adventures) and beat a hasty retreat back to Madurai

End of the line - Kanyakumari station - southernmost point of the Indian Rail system


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...

Of Jims and Johns

Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...