Category Archives: Train Stations

London

After a hiatus from travelling, I paid a visit to London. For a change, this was more of a people-meeting trip than a travelling trip. Since I didn’t get a chance to travel to the US in the last few years, I ended up visiting London to meet a close friend there.

It was the first time I took the Eurostar train from Amsterdam. I enjoyed how unceremonious the whole security, immigration and boarding process was.

“The sprawl” that’s the word which resonates the most when I try to describe the place. Every spot in this sprawling city has a unique look and feel – unlike Amsterdam, where it took me a few years to tell neighbourhoods apart. A microcosm of dwellers, businesses and people going in between them through loud tube trains keeps the city humming. At times it felt very New-York-esque, cleaner, more expensive and sparser in garbage bins, and devoid of the egregious tipping culture.

Here are some pictures that I managed to capture on my strolls. I stayed at a hotel on this street with my friend. The juxtaposition of old victorian style buildings against a backdrop of tall skyscrapers is fascinating and even a little dystopian.

Long lines dissuaded me from visiting the Natural History Museum 5 years ago. Being here during the week helped me get in without too much trouble this time. The fact that museums are free blows my mind. I still have good memories from my visit to the RAF Museum in London 5 years ago.

There is something quite impressive about the bridges in London. They are dramatic in their standing in contrast to the quaint ones I am used to in Amsterdam.

I walked around the Thames for a while, and when I reached a dead end, I spotted a service ladder and helped myself back onto the streets.

Once back up, I loitered around, searching for a spot to catch some sunshine. This particular spot had a very Assassins-creed vibe. I enjoyed contemplating where the hidden hay mound would lay as I waited for my colleague to join me for an impromptu coffee.

The ubiquity of tube transport never ceases to amaze me. However, such large projects don’t get planned or built any more as the political climate clings to the present gains rather than envisioning the future.
Using a phone to tap in and out was a refreshing change. I no longer have to fumble getting a card, funding it regularly and keeping it topped up. For someone who is just a visitor, it made exploring the city more accessible.

The frequency of trains could put a lot of cities to shame. That alone compensates for the unpleasantness of how loud it is in the underground. On average, the noise levels reached 82db, and my watch kept throwing alerts about that fact.

One cannot not talk about how the red buses stand out. Unfortunately, I couldn’t spot enough of the iconic red telephone boxes, which, when I did, weren’t in great shape.

To wrap up the trip, I spent some time at a cafe with a lovely friend. The place’s name, “Kaffeine”, triggered a nostalgia I couldn’t place at that moment. Which later turned out to be this KDE/Linux thing (i.e. Kaffeine media player) from my college days, where I spent quite some time trying to get music to play on various Linux distros. And in the Netherlands, the drink is spelt Koffie, which also played a part.

Airports are one of my favourite places. Getting on a flight after three years was both never wracking and exciting. And I promptly fell asleep after devouring a quesadilla that I sneaked onto the plane from the airport.

Musee d’Orsay, Paris

Its an old railway station built in 1900’s in Paris, which now has been converted into a art and sculpture museum, boasting the largest collection of impressionist masterpieces.

On my first trip to Paris, I missed visiting this museum. So I made it a point to do so on my second trip last weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed some of the impressive life-sized realist paintings. But I was far more intrigued by the building, its history and architecture and also the crowd and surrounding ambience. Here are some photos

The museum was buzzing with people patiently waiting in long queues

I could not comprehend the fact that the interiors were so beautifully designed and built, all for a railway station that saw less than 40 years of service.

The view of River Seine was dream like

The way the the museum disappears and the residential buildings begin is just beautiful

Indian Railways

Travelling on trains in India, makes for a wondrous journey filled with amazing sights of towns, villages and other dwelling places and a mesmerising view of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmlands, draped in a blanket of early morning fog, or fresh crops bathing in sunshine and morning due, or forests filled with freshest of waters, or just simple people trying to get by their lives.

The country is so big, that it sometimes takes upto 3 days to go from one corner of the country to another. Consequently the country also has one of the largest railway networks in the world employing over 1.5 million people to serve over 25 million passengers travelling on 15,000 trains – every single day.

Visiting India and taking a 5 day trip to the mountains while using only trains as means of transport, after staying abroad and being used to high speed trains and urban-ness for a long stretch of an year made me realise how amazing India is, and how even more amazing the Indian Railways is. Serving 7 billion passengers annually, despite the bad reservation system and incompetent management, running a network of that scale in a developing nation is no small feat by any means.

I decided, every time I visit India, I will explore the country, travelling to the remotest parts (that are safe) while using trains as my primary means of transport.

Here is a glimpse of my experience..

Train stations tickle all your senses with the amazing variety of smells from foods stalls and sweet stands, mixed with the bad ones from the ill-maintained tracks and places – while you are simultaneously doused in the clamouring sounds of hawkers and vendors; beggars and coolies; and bustling sounds of people just trying to reach their destinations in their own busy lives.

Here is a short video I shot while hanging off the doors, along with dozen others, of a moving train that is about to come to a halt at a station …

Going Somewhere

Paris Underground

Oblivious to the world above ground, is another world, hidden below the ground, which is the Paris underground metro. The first time I came across underground metros, it was in Hong Kong and I thought it was as complex as it could get, but boy was I wrong. I have never ever seen anything like this before in my life. Entire city of Paris sprawls with underground stations, situated at several underground levels, below historic monuments, beside rivers, inside hills, below buildings, basically everywhere. The rail lines pass through the city from one end to another, in several levels, never intersecting, going under every possible imaginable structures and water bodies.

Some of the metro stations themselves are so large, that for an outsider it would take an easy 15-30 minutes just to get to the right platform, that is after you have figured out the entrance to the underground, most of which inconspicuously blend into the streets, sometimes with the only indication being a staircase leading into the ground, in places where they strangely appear to have no business of being there. Trying to use connecting trains to get from one place to another is an entirely different deal altogether. In my 5 day stay, I would have walked almost 5-10 miles just underground, while trying to get to the right platform.

What I can neither understand nor comprehend is that many of these rail tunnels that are still in use, were built almost a century ago in the early 1900s, for electric locomotives – talk about having vision! Few routes are now completely automated and are devoid of any human intervention. That for me represents the culmination of old meets new.

Enough words. Here are some pictures…

Not knowing that the french word ‘Sortie’ meant ‘Exit’ in english, caused quite a bit of confusion the first 2 days, when I tried to find my way out, until I realised it can’t be possible to get to a station named ‘Sortie’ from every corner of the city.

No Fuss

I like travelling and getting lost.