The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia

by Paul Theroux

the first condition of right thought is right sensation—the first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it . . . —T. S. ELIOT, “Rudyard Kipling”

I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.

the trains with bewitching names, the Orient Express, the North Star, the Trans-Siberian. I sought trains; I found passengers.

I decided that travel was flight and pursuit in equal parts,

September chill hit London and roused in me visions of palm trees and the rosy heat of Ceylon. That cold made leaving all the easier; leaving was a cure: “Have you tried aspirin?” “No, I think I’ll go to India.”

It was after eleven, and most of the apartment blocks were in darkness. But in one bright window there was a dinner party ending, like a painting of a city interior, hung and illuminated in the shadowy gallery of rooftops and balconies.

“In those horrible crocodiles of tourists, in and out of churches, museums, and mosques. No, no, no. I just like to be still, find a comfortable chair. Do you see what I mean? I like to absorb a country.”

It takes a while to realize that what are represented in these vastly different building styles are not social classes, but rather centuries, each style an example of its own age—Istanbul has been a city for twenty-seven centuries—and

The conversation, like many others I had with people on trains, derived an easy candor from the shared journey, the comfort of the dining car, and the certain knowledge that neither of us would see each other again.

Nothing is expected of the train passenger. In planes the traveler is condemned to hours in a tight seat; ships require high spirits and sociability; cars and buses are unspeakable. The sleeping car is the most painless form of travel.

I traveled easily in two directions, along the level rails while Asia flashed changes at the window, and at the interior rim of a private world of memory and language. I cannot imagine a luckier combination.

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation; and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

one of those French dishes that take ages to prepare and are devoured swiftly: a brief delicacy that is mostly labor and memory.

I’ve got a theory that what you hear influences—maybe even determines—what you see. An ordinary street can be transformed by a scream. Or a smell might make a horrible place attractive.

a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists);

After all, the grand tour is just the inspired man’s way of heading home.

the difference between travel writing and fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows.