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Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Monisha Rajesh (Author, Narrator), Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (Publisher)

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Bloomsbury presents Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh, read by Monisha Rajesh.

Winner of the National Geographic Traveller Award for Best Travel Book.

Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award.

When Monisha Rajesh announced plans to circumnavigate the globe in 80 train journeys, she was met with wide-eyed disbelief. But it wasn’t long before she was carefully plotting a route that would cover 45,000 miles - almost twice the circumference of the earth - coasting along the world’s most remarkable railways; from the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet’s Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express.

Packing up her rucksack - and her fiancé, Jem, Monisha embarks on an unforgettable adventure that will take her from London’s St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia and Mongolia, North Korea, Canada, Kazakhstan and beyond. The ensuing journey is one of constant movement and mayhem, as the pair strikes up friendships and swaps stories with the hilarious, irksome and ultimately endearing travellers they meet on board, all while taking in some of the earth’s most breathtaking views.

From the author of Around India in 80 Trains comes another witty and irreverent look at the world and a celebration of the glory of train travel. Rajesh offers a wonderfully vivid account of life, history and culture in an audiobook that will make you laugh out loud - and reflect on what it means to be a global citizen - as you whirl around the world listening to it.

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Product details

Listening Length	11 hours and 4 minutes
Author	Monisha Rajesh
Narrator	Monisha Rajesh
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	May 28, 2020
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B088TWMN3G
Best Sellers Rank	#27,983 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #2 in Railroad Engineering #6 in Asia Travel & Tourism #18 in General India Travel Guides

Customer reviews

5 star		66%
4 star		18%
3 star		10%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Robert G YokoyamaTop Contributor: Classical Music

I am in love of travelling by train because of this book.

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2020

Verified Purchase

Monisha Rajesh makes every country and their attractions sound so appealing. I would never even think about travelling to Tibet or North Korea. I would like to visit these countries because of her descriptive writing. There is the Potala palace in Tibet. This palace contains the Dalai Lama's throne. Tibet also has many butter sculptures made by monks. I think this would be interesting to see. I would love to see all of these things in person. I would love to visit Pyongyang to attend a film festival. I love eating new dishes. I would love to try the yak curry in Tibet. I would even try the cumin bread that is available on the silk road in Asia.

I learned a lot about different trains. The fastest train in the world is in Beijing. The top speed of this train is 268 miles per hour. It would be an amazing experience for me to travel that fast. I learned there is a train called the Reunification Express in Vietnam. It goes from Hanoi to Saigon in Vietnam. I never even knew that train travel is available in Vietnam. I would love to ride on the Venice Orient Express. It travels through Italy and all of Europe . I would love to see the Dolomite mountains in Italy while riding on this train.

The author even travelled to Japan and rode the bullet train. I would to ride on this fast train and eat delicious Japanese food. I even learned two Japanese words in this chapter of the book. I learned that sakura means cherry and that kodama means echo. I hope I can use these two words when conversing with another Japanese person. I am in love with the idea of travelling by train because of this book.

7 people found this helpful

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tlperry

Disappointed by the author

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2019

Verified Purchase

Not a bad book. But the author definitely had a bias against America. The entire chapter was nothing but negativity and criticism. I was hoping for a book about travel. Not your political opinion.

15 people found this helpful

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STEVANATO GIORGIO

A very nice ride, the author is a person I wish I could travel with...

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

I enjoyed every page of it. I happened to travel on some of the routes described in the book and I share much of the feelings and considerations by the author.
The focus is of course on the train experience but It's also a very interesting insight on different parts of the world, different cultures and different travel companions.
Fun to read, pages go very fast with new and interesting experiences at any chapter.

7 people found this helpful

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How

This book is a lot more than just a travel guide.

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2019

Verified Purchase

First and foremost, I was thoroughly enticed with each unique train adventure. Around the World in 80 Trains provided a culturally interactive and observational foray into the lives of humans I would not be able to meet on my own. I also learned a lot about the circumstances and political conditions of various repressed people groups living in countries along the train routes. What a worthwhile read!

2 people found this helpful

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Spontaneous one

Worth a read at a low price

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2019

Verified Purchase

The author certainly favors certain regions but overall a worthwile read, her stay in north korea is interesting. Its clear why trump would attracted to the Kim family dominance. The family creates a total myth and the cities are under used Disneyworlds. Their control has brainwashed the people to like being in prison like the Gaza strip.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Great book!

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

What a lovely book. Makes me want to plan a train ride. The only thing that would have made this book better was to have included a map - even a rough one - that showed her travels.

3 people found this helpful

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Larry Feldman

Great travel story

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

I loved the idea of taking 80 trains around the world. The way she travelled around is not always how I would love to travel but it’s fun to read about. It’s about meeting quirky people, enjoying bad experiences, and seeing wild parts of the world from train windows and bad hotels.

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Amit Banerjee

Not a train travellers book!

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2019

Too much personal commentary on social and political state of the countries visited. Trains and the experience of train travels seems to be secondary focus.

10 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

SWMuse

Not to my taste

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

I had read the authors previous book and hoped she had changed from a bit of a moaner to someone a little more mature and interesting but alas, I was disappointed.
And I found her condescending. *Spoiler alert* - here is an excerpt from page 46 “Tour groups to my mind comprise people who lack the initiative to discover a new place, relying on parroted information that may or may not be true”.
Tour groups generally consist of those, in my experience, who don’t have the money or the time to do the type of journeys that the author can!. I do tours myself, research before I go and find my limited leave usefully filled by the simple experience of travelling somewhere new and seeing things with my own eyes!. Initiative is wonderful but since other authors have written books about train travel eg Theroux then maybe the author child have shown a bit more ‘initiative’ and done something entirely different ?.

I just don’t enjoy her books and if you do then great, I’m pleased you do but I just find that she never sounds very happy with things so ask myself why she bothers.

Not an enjoyable read.

39 people found this helpful

G. W. Walker

Awful. Not my type of travel book at all

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 8, 2020

Verified Purchase

Admittedly I only got to page 60 but gave up in frustration. They had got half way down in Vietnam before I realised that from all the way from London I virtually knew or learned nothing about the countries or places they visited. Just conversations with passengers - which you suspect were made up to make it more interesting - and what the trains were like. Neither had been to Moscow before but the only description was a botched trip to some military park a big train ride away. And that was basically all you got as their experience of Moscow. Not for me

19 people found this helpful

Cheerio

I didn't finish it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 27, 2020

Verified Purchase

I was looking forward to reading this as rail travel is one of my favourite things.
But I couldn't connect with the author on this journey I'm afraid. I gave up on it at the beginning of the 'Southwest Chief' chapter which given the interesting subject took some doing. I'd had enough of the supercilious comments about fellow travellers in the previous chapters and the opening paragraph of that one offered no prospect of respite.

12 people found this helpful

peter515018

How to have fun on a 5 day train ride!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 20, 2019

Verified Purchase

I enjoy my train rides and reading this wonderful book made me want to go on all the train rides lovingly written about in this book! Monisha Rajesh gets it spot on - getting in the zone on long distance runs, the random meetings and friendships, the extremes of comfort (oh those toilets!) She even gets the totally annoying ‘seen it done it only much better than you’ guy! With do many adventures to pack into a journey it’s hard to pick out favourites but the steam train in Russia, the organised glory of Japan’s built trains (bliss) and the fabulously named Canadian and American trains stand out. Fun, thoughtful and informative in equal measure - a treat for train travel fans and armchair travellers alike!

13 people found this helpful

Unbelievably dull!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2020

Verified Purchase

How this book got published, let alone won an award as "book of the year" is beyond me. The author comes across as having no interest in the places she visits, and has an incredible sense of self entitlement and superiority. Some of the sections are so scant you seriously wonder if she actually undertook that part of the journey. The descriptions are dull, banal and of little interest to the reader. Entire countries and journeys zip by in a couple of pages, and the reader is left none the wiser about the places she has been. The book only really comes alive in the North Korea and Tibet sections. Perhaps they are the only places she only went to?!
A great example of "don't judge a book by its cover!

4 people found this helpful

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Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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