Around India In 80 Trains
What's the journey all about?
One day while bored at work, Monisha nosed a map of India and noticed that the boom of its domestic airlines connected around 80 cities - impressive but not exactly eco-friendly. Taking a leaf out of Jules Verne's classic tale, she decided that the best way to visit those cities was to travel around India in 80 trains, and write a book herself.
As the largest civilian employer in the world, featuring luxury trains, toy trains, a hospital on wheels, the world's steepest, slowest, and second longest train journeys, she knew that the Indian railways would have a few tales to tell...
On the 14th January, she and her photographer, Harald Passepartout, arrived in Chennai - where Monisha once lived - and decided to use the coastal city as their start and end point.
THE PROPOSED SCHEDULE
From Chennai to Kanyakumari to catch the solar eclipse at the southernmost tip of the railways.
From Kanyakumari to Trivandrum and up the Konkan Railway via Mangalore and Goa.
From Mumbai to Delhi on the Indian Maharaja.
From Delhi to Kottayam on the 48-hour Kerala Express.
From Kerala across Tamil Nadu's temple range.
From Chennai up to Hyderabad and Mumbai, then to Pune and back to Delhi via the new Duronto Express.
From Delhi to Jhansi, Orccha and Khajuraho, then across to Ahmedabad.
From Ahmedabad to Dwarka, the westernmost tip of the railways, via the island of Diu.
From Dwarka through Jodhpur to Jaisalmer and Bikaner.
From Rajasthan to Punjab via some speedy shatabdis.
From Delhi swooping to Mysore to catch the Golden Chariot across the golden south.
From Goa to Mumbai to the Lifeline Express in Madhya Pradesh.
From Umaria to Allahabad to Delhi via another Duronto Express.
From Delhi to Jammu and Udhampur - the northernmost tip of the railways.
From Jammu to Sikkim to Ledo in Assam, the easternmost tip of the railways.
From West Bengal to Orissa to Hyderabad.
And once central again, they should finish their journey through Karnataka and then swing back across to Chennai - but whether or not this happens is anybody's guess.
Keep following Monisha's blog and click on Harald's photos to see what scrapes they get themselves into, and fingers crossed, out of...