Of Train Journeys

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;And charging along like troops in a battle/ All through the meadows the horses and cattle:All of the sights of the hill and the plain/ Fly as thick as driving rain;And ever again, in the wink of an eye,Painted stations whistle by. Here is a child who clambers and scrambles, All by himself and gathering brambles; Here is a tramp who stands and gazes; And here is the green for stringing the daisies!Here is a cart runaway in the road / Lumping along with man and load; And here is a mill, and there is a river:Each a glimpse and gone forever! - Robert Louis Stevenson
There was a time when every yearly vacation involved a long and winding train ride, with the wind whipping my hair into a messy muddle. B and me were always fighting for the 'window-seat' and never tired of training our eyes into the distance, watching the landscape flit by. Squinting into the changing vistas, eyes smarting and streaming, I enjoyed every waking moment. The night was fun too...clambering into my bunk bed (sometimes the middle, oftentimes the upper), the train morphed into a cradle, rocking me to sleep with a rumbling lullaby. In between waking and sleeping, there was eating - vadas, bread-omelette, cutlet, idly, dosa, masala chai - it was a veritable cornucopia of gastronomic delights - dispensed by vendors with colourful personalities to match the wares they hawked...Those are some of my most pleasant memories, especially since the number of train journeys have drastically reduced, of late.
Avion travel is so clinical - there is no interaction with your co-passengers; no eye-contact, shared food, story-swapping, steely machine smell of a second-class cabin...
I wish I could take a break - a nice, long train-break...chug away on my steel steed Faster than fairies, faster than witches,Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches