Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

Many years ago I viewed a television program called 'Great Rail Journeys of the World' and was rather taken by an episode describing the train journey to Simla in northern India. I have always enjoyed train travel from when I was a boy and my father worked for the state railway. We didn't have a car but part of his salary package was free rail travel during holidays, so we travelled a lot locally by train. When my wife and I took a world tour and passed through India we took the train from Simla to New Delhi, as well as many other train trips in India. So, when 'The Great Railway Bazaar' appeared and Mr Theroux told his own experience of the journey I had an immediate connection.

Since then it seems to me that Mr Theroux and I have strange synergistic connections although I have never met the man. When I read 'Dark Star Safari' I realised that, as he was taking his journey south, I was working briefly in Johannesburg - perhaps we would meet? (But we didn't, as far as I know.)

When I read 'The Happy Isles of Oceania' and came across Mr Theroux's description of spending time at Nabouwalu in Fiji (a ferry pier and nothing much else) I was surprised because my wife and I and our two boys got stranded at Nabouwalu and spent a very uncomfortable night amongst some of the friendilest people in the world.

I have immensely enjoyed all of Mr Theroux's travel books (although I do think his sense of humour has diminished since 'Dark Star Safari'). I like his description of the landscape, his observations of people, and especially his insightful reflections about himself. His novels, on the other hand, I don't care for much at all - too much violence, too much sex. It's not that he doesn't reflect on these in his travels, but it seems to me that their profile in his fiction is too graphic, unnecessarily over-described. But that is just my view. The novellas and short stories fare little better for me than the novels.

Going through a challenging time in my own life (my 60th birthday) I found myself losing all interest in reading, but 'Ghost Train' changed that. How surprising was it, then, to discover that Mr Theroux, on his travels through Cambodia and Vietnam was going in exactly the opposite direction to my family at about the same time! We may well have passed in night trains going opposite directions between Hue and Hanoi! Or we may have passed in the streets of Siem Reap (our hotels were next door to each other)!

I also realised that I had already taken the train journey from Rangoon beyond Mandalay in Myanmar that Mr Theroux describes, not only with Mr Theroux in 'The Great Railway Bazaar' but also with Anna Kavan (in the 1920s - but not a lot may have changed) in her autobiographical novel 'Let Me Alone'.

Of course, common experiences give us the opportunity to validate or object. Certainly I found my reflections stimulating. Violence and sex are never far away from Mr Theroux's thoughts, not that he tells us anything about his personal experiences in either - wisely avoiding trouble spots such as Cambodia had been in the time of 'The Great Railway Bazaar', or Afghanistan is in the time of 'Ghost Train'.

It has always been a wonder to me that a country like Germany could produce Mozart, Gauss, Geothe, Caspar David Friedrich, ETA Hoffmann .... and Hitler. And that that wellspring of civilisation had been so corrupted by that one man. For me there is only one solution - every individual has a responsibility to think things out for themselves, to evaluate and not to blindly follow. I am reminded of Einstein saying that the trouble with the world is not the bad people in it, but the good people who won't do anything about it. I guess he meant that whatever we do there will be bad people - people who are mentally 'deformed', psychopaths and the like. These people will exist - they need to be managed. To put them in armies, or police forces, to make them security guards or bouncers where they can practice their violence and intimidation just won't do. If the leader is themselves psychologically abnormal (like Hitler?), or weak like Mr Theroux discovered Pol Pot in Cambodia apparently was, it leaves everyone vulnerable. No matter where Mr Theroux travels - or any of us - there will be the vulnerable and the crushed. As well as naturally or otherwise degraded environments.

Mr Theroux, after experiencing the smiling faces of the Bayon at Angkor Thom, but remembering the recent atrocities in Cambodia, imposes something sinister on the smiles. And after learning more about the atrocities at Phnom Penh, he suggests that the Khmer culture had a dark side that came out with Pol Pot. This I disagree with entirely - there is a dark side to all people, and I doubt that it was systemic in the Khmer culture in any way comparable to, say, the Aztec or Mayan civilisations.

But Mr Theroux is very balanced in his observations - almost ashamed of the great treatment he received from the Vietnamese despite what his country had inflicted on the people of Vietnam. As an Australian, almost as culpable in that situation, I had the same feeling.

This is a great read, a great adventure - not only in its events, but also in the responses an attentive reader is likely to experience.

Other recommendations:
'The Great Railway Bazaar', 'Riding the Iron Rooster', 'The Happy Isles of Oceania', 'Dark Star Safari', 'Milroy the Magician' - Paul Theroux
'Let Me Alone' - Anna Kavan
train travel in Australia (Cairns-Kuranda-Cairns, Cairns-Brisbane, Brisbane-Sydney, Sydney-Blue Mountains-Sydney, Sydney-Perth ('The Indian Pacific'), Darwin-Port Augusta ('The Ghan'), The Picchi Ricchi railway, Port Augusta-Adelaide, Adelaide-Melbourne, Puffing Billy, Melbourne-Sydney)

I had been looking forward to reading this book, however his feeling of futility in how the world looks, the various countries, seemed quite prnounced. I felt discouraged when I finished. Not what I was hoping for.

Look, I enjoy reading travel books and Theroux is always interesting and worth the read.

But it struck me while reading this book that it must pain Theroux to ever say something nice about the U.S. This is a book that is about the other side of the world so, with the exception of his chapter on Vietnam, I didn't really expect to read much about America. I wanted to read what people thought of their own countries, their own realities, and so forth.

However, what shocked me was an exchange Theroux had with a man in Perm named Sergei. Theroux, Sergei, V. Shmirov (a historian of the gulag system), and a woman who served as the translator were heading to Perm 36, the only intact gulag prison in Russia. On the way there, the three Russians were talking to Theroux about what the Russians had experienced over the decades: the spying, murder, fear, torture, imprisonment, terror, and quashing of any hint of freedom or rights.

And what did Theroux say in response?

"The paradox is that at exactly the same time - the 1950s - we had McCarthy in the U.S. persecuting people for sympathizing with the Soviet Union."

Sergei did not let Theroux go on and reminded him that the comparison was not the same.

But Theroux would not be deterred. He agreed but still put forth that, ". . . the motives, the witch-hunts, the betrayals, the stink of fear - of ruined lives and lost jobs and disgrace - that hung over McCarthyism were similar." (pp. 477-478).

Please.

My jaw fell open when I read that. I was embarrassed. You would have thought that, if for no other reason than politeness, Theroux would have simply listened to what these three Russians had to say and not try to minimize the severity of their reality by making some ridiculous comparison to a brief and limited moment in American history. Anyone with just a cursory understanding of Soviet history during the 20th century would have been humbled and appreciative of what those poor people endured. The fact that they survived is a testament to their spirit and strength.

If Theroux feels it so necessary to highlight America's sins, then he should write a book about that subject. But he shouldn't go abroad and try to ingratiate himself with people from other countries by attempting to equate our experiences with theirs. These people are not ignorant - they know American history and know that we have not experienced the horrors that many countries have experienced.

i picked up this book because as a reprise of his first book, The Great Railway Bazaar, it happened to take in many countries that i had visited in a seven week trip across Asia from Bucharest in summer 2007. I was deeply saddened by what i read especially in his comments on Budapest, Hungary and Romania. He seened to set our to say as many ugly surface things as he possible could about his journey which began in March 2006...and he dismissed both countries in a few awful pages choosing to see only the tawdry, corrupt, and dirty aspects. He continues in this vein and comes across as very condescending in everything. he almost seems to have gotten too old to travel, as he kvetches like an old man at everything...while intermittently dropping into first-class travel and luxury hotels which rarely show the real face of the countries he is visiting. Throughout the book, which i struggle to finish, he seems obsessed about sex-for-sale as if this is some important barometer of the places he visits. Altogether, a huge disappointment and not a book to be recommended. Interestingly, i have been concurrently reading another 'travel' book, 'River Town..Two Years on the Yangste' by Peter Hessler which is about his two years as a TEFL Peace Corps Volunteer in China. This book is very good and completely un-condescending as the author describes his struggles to learn the language and to really understand China and the Chinese. it is such a welcome relief to read this after struggling with Theroux's bile-driven offering.

I'm a big fan of Paul Theroux. I like both his fiction and his travel books. Having read the Great Railway Bazaar years ago, I reread it to refresh my memory before I read Ghost Train. Paul shows a bit of sentimentality on this trip, but it is not overdone or maudlin in any way. He's trying to reconnect with his past and his youth, taking stock of his life. He's does so in such a successful way. The chapter on Burma broke my heart: Paul's generosity and humanity shone through in his effort to turn one life around. The most memorable chapters for me are of his travels through Japan. I'm also a big fan of Haruki Murakami; so, what an added value to the book to hear Murakami expound on Japan and Japanese modernity! Paul is also a perceptive observer and reader of literature. There are several books that he mentioned throughout his travels that I will soon purchase and read. I cannot say enough good things about Paul Theroux. I'm eagerly awaiting his next book, and so should you. He is one of our our most underrated writers in America.