Oh The Places We'll Go...
My Dad first fell in love with train travel about 20 years ago when he took his first journey aboard the Trans Siberian Railway, a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East. It was here that he met and formed a friendship with a gentleman by the name of Tim Littler, who is the founder of Golden Eagle Luxury Trains, as well as an accomplished author who has detailed his passion for rail travel dating all the way back to his childhood in rural England. When Tim left school, however, he thought it best to join his family wine business - Whitwhams - becoming their Managing Director in 1975. During Tim’s time with the company, they established a booming worldwide wine export business. But Tim just couldn’t seem to shake his passion for rail and travel. In 1989, Tim formed GW Travel - which was a bit of a “tip of the hat” to his family name - and spent years intertwining wine and travel in tandem through special steam tours through Europe. The rest, as they say, is history. To be able to make a living - and a damn good one at that - around good wine and rail journeys through beautiful places all over the world? You can imagine why he and my Dad hit it off so well.
Several years later, my Dad decided to embark on another rail journey aboard the Darjeeling Mail, which took him through Northern India (which you can also see outlined above). On this trip, he had the good fortune of traveling with a gentleman by the name of Paul Theroux, who is considered by many to be one of the top travel writers and novelists in the world. As you can imagine, time spent with Mr. Theroux only deepened my Dad’s love of travel…and more specifically…train travel. This idea that a train was no longer just about getting from Point A to Point B. Rather - it was an incredibly scenic and efficient way of spanning a much larger portion of a country in a much shorter period of time that seemed…well….entirely logical to him.
What I found during our trip through Africa is that train travel also takes you off the beaten path in a way that both allows you…and forces you…to experience a 360 degree view of the country and the people who live there. Where they live. How they live. How they experience life. How their life experiences shape them. As I have told many people, I saw some of the most beautiful geography and met some of the warmest and friendliest people throughout our travels in Africa; but I also saw and experienced the most extreme poverty in its absolute rawest form. I saw and deeply felt what that human emotion of anger and despair really is. It’s usually not the stuff they talk about in your standard Fodor’s or “Let’s Go” guide books. It’s certainly not your typical double decker bus tour. But, if you are willing to fully lean into this all encompassing sensory experience of being on a train - the good, the bad and the uncomfortable - there is no better way to experience travel.
Our journey this time around will be aboard the Golden Eagle Madras Mail and has been carefully designed to guide us through all that Southern India has to offer. The Madras Mail route, as you can see in the map above, covers everything from India’s most important southern cities, examines spectacular World Heritage Sites and traverses along beautiful and tropical coastlines. Our key ports of call - basically our beginning and end - are Mumbai (Bombay) and Chennai (Madras). In between the hustle and bustle of these two more populated cities, we will have the opportunity to experience a more tropical and tranquil India filled with history, music, culture and beautiful landscapes. Fishing Villages. Tea Towns located high up in the hillsides and mountains. Beachside communities filled with artists and artisans. And…if PJ gets his way….a few pretty spectacular immersive animal experiences.
In what can only be described as a random stroke of good fortune and coincidence, we have recently been informed that Tim Littler plans to join our journey through Southern India in celebration of the company’s 30 year history. I guess you could say that this trip has - quite literally - come completely full circle for my Dad.
