Hopping on sleeper trains across the length of Iran, mixing it with late night check-in at guesthouses and daily invitations by random strangers into their homes. The construction of this railway line was once the prestige project of the Shah of Persia. Taking it slow, a journey for retired men, students, itinerary traders, pilgrims, farmers and businessmen etc. Musing on my Train travels from my friend Paul Salopek: "Caravans from al-Sham or al-Misr to Mecca—back in the camel days—took up to a year and contained as many as 10,000 people on 6000 animals. They stretched for kilometers. A guy at the front would fire a canon in the mornings to announce the departure of the vanguard. It was the dim announcement to the rest of the train to prepare for leaving. The caravans contained mobile shops, blacksmiths, clinics, schools, and everyone from slaves to queens. They were traveling towns. But towns with a clear and linear purpose: to travel. There was a shared destination, a common horizon. The effect of this combination—the cohesion of a community with the shared mission of moving—made such columns of travellers simultaneously tight-knit and dispersed. Ying and yang. A balance. Such voyagers were known as rahalla—a word that is deeper than the English “pilgrim” because it suggests a way of being that should be permanentIt, yet is ephemeral. Rahalla had privileges. Those not moving accommodated them. This is the faint, echoed feeling that perhaps you are tapping into on modern trains; a deeper collective memory that in fact may go back all the way to the very beginning, to moving across the land in hunting bands, a primordial groove of collective movement that was at some level neurological and sacramental—united by purpose, yet fluid." Shot for National Geographic (unpublished)

Life Aboard the Longest Train Ride Through India Five days aboard the Vivek Express documenting life on the longest train ride in the Indian subcontinent. Starting at the southernmost tip of India, the route stretches 2,637 miles northward from Kanniyakumari to Dibrugarh, joining the two geographical extremes of India. "Beneath the relentless churn of steel, wood, and dust, the Indian railway is made entirely of stories. For more than a century, it has witnessed the infinite expression of the human condition, borne the incalculable weight of separations, and gently rocked the world-weary into oblivion." Full story and VIDEOS here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/asia/india/life-on-the-longest-train-ride-through-india/

Travel 3,000 Miles Through China’s Wondrous Wild West "The train wasn’t as fancy—sand from the Taklamakan Desert filtered in through cracks in the windows, bathing the cars in yellow light “like it was California in the fifties.” He says the mood of the trip was completely different, too. “It was a short trip, just six hours, so there’s not much boredom that settles in,” he says. “It was full of students that were kind of rowdy and laughing. It was a much more exuberant atmosphere than the long trip from Hong Kong to Ürümqi.” And since Paley is fluent in Turkish, having lived in the country for years, he could converse with these passengers and get a sense of their lives." A train ride following the southern branch of the Silk Road, along the Taklamakan desert, the second largest shifting-sand desert in the world. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/07/travel-3-000-miles-through-chinas-wondrous-wild-west/

Travel 3,000 Miles Through China’s Wondrous Wild West " The cars are well appointed, with purple and blue seats, floral tablecloths, and lace curtains depicting the promise of camels and mountains in the west. Each car has a hot-water dispenser, and the salty aroma of instant noodle soup fills the air. The staff are impeccably dressed (blue for controllers, who check tickets and maintain the cleanliness of the cars, and purple for food vendors), and the whole operation is “army-like organized,” Paley says. Each stop is only 10 to 15 minutes, and while technically passengers can get off to stretch their legs, “you are looked on very seriously by the staff,” Paley says. “They don’t want you to stray...” " From Hong Kong to Urumqi (Xinjiang province), it is one of the longest train journeys in the world—2,910 miles (4,683 Km) across China, in over 50 hours. The enormous resources from Xinjiang (cotton, minerals, oil) usually go East, while the people (mostly Han Chinese) from the mainland come the other way, towards Xinjiang (a province traditionally inhabited by Muslim Uighurs), aka China’s Wild West. Full story here : https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/07/travel-3-000-miles-through-chinas-wondrous-wild-west/

Travel 3,000 Miles Through China’s Wondrous Wild West View through the windows of the train crossing the whole of China, East to West: from Hong Kong to Urumchi (Xinjiang), from jungle to desert. It is one of the longest train journeys in the world—2,910 miles (4,683 Km) across China, in over 50 hours. Full story is here : https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/07/travel-3-000-miles-through-chinas-wondrous-wild-west/

We hop in and out of the “Palace on Wheels”, a vintage luxury train crossing Rajasthan to eventually bring us to the Taj Mahal. A weeklong journey through India in a train that is at par with the Orient Express of the west.