train travelogues
Through the heart of India. By Rail.
An overgrown green carpet stretched out both sides of the railway lines.
Surrounded on both sides by innumerable number of coconut trees, their heads waving lazily in the afternoon winds.A cool breeze wafting through the window, augmenting the sights of the occasional backwaters, with houseboats and canoes sailing in straight lines.The coastal plains of Kerala are a sight to behold, deservedly called God’s Own Land.
Stoic and staid brown stretching for as long as the eye can see, dotted by clumps of weather hardened bushes.
This land is best viewed in the orange light of dusk or dawn, when everything seems surreal, right out of a Salvador Dali painting. Sweltering heat in the afternoon leaves your thirst for water unquenchable, while the cold chills you to the bone during the night. The badlands of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh depart, leaving you relieved.
A huge swathe of plain brown land. Crumpled into a ball and set plain again by the hands of god.
Uneven, rocky and barren. The ruins of old forts, long forgotten by everyone but the weather stare at you bleakly from a distance.This place is old, virtually unchanged since man first found it, and later deserted it. But even in its desolation and unevenness, there is a strange beauty about it, unquantifiable by words.The Vindhyas and Satpuras gives you a glimpse into the past, long enough for you to understand its significance in our history.
An endless green carpet stretched out till the end of the horizon, with huge neatly cut rectangular patches of crops grown.
The rocky hills and plateaus at the center gives way to the northern plains which have been nourishing the humans of the subcontinent for the better part of 4 millennials. The mere extent of it leaves you in awe when you realize that the food being grown here feeds more than a billion people. The only things higher than the crops are the huge utility poles, which support high power electricity lines ferrying electric power from dams to big cities. Just as arteries pump blood to our sinews, the Ganges and its tributaries breathes life into these plains, gifting them with layer upon layer of fertile soil since the beginning of time.
Born as a result of the largest pile up in the history of our 1.2 billion year old planet. Beyond the mere comprehension of any mortal.
Many have tried to conquer that realm with words, and have failed. Shielding the subcontinent from the icy winds that wasted the Tibetan plains, the hot gales that scorch the Afghan lands and holding back the monsoon clouds so that rain gives life to our plains, if the Northern plains is the mother of Indian civilization, the Himalayas is the father.
It is no wonder why it was hard to conquer India, why she never invaded another land in her history, or why the people who came to plunder, stayed back. The Himalayas act as a stern deputy, making the to and fro journey arduous. Even if you have the largest army there ever was, only if the Himalayas decide, you enter.
The cold never bites or hits you in the Himalayas. It simply turns your insides out. You will prefer being dunked in ice cold water to standing in the path of the frigid winds that populate the valleys between the mountains. Trust me, I have tried. The first thing you notice is that the sky has never seemed so blue. Of course, the reason being that you are above the clouds.
The mountains teach you a lesson or two in humility.
It shortens the inflated sense of perception you have of yourself. You realize how small and insignificant you are, in the grand scheme of things, as opposed to ‘the world revolves around me’ ideology that all of us normally have.
Doubling back through the mountains, the plains, the rocky plateaus and the central plains we finally come to the southern shoreline.
The advantage of being sandwiched between a mountain and the sea is that the color in vogue is green.
But you never get tired of it. The Western Ghats can be seen welcoming you in the distance, while in the opposite direction you can spot the shoreline at the same time, if you are lucky enough. One of the more beautiful routes to go in a train.
Whatever natural feature there is to see, you will encounter it here, in the 2900 Km journey through this country by train.
