The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia Kindle Edition

He was 31 and married with two small children, living in a small house in London. He had no "job" as such but he had multiple narrative and pedagogical skills. He was French Canadian, a native of New England, a product of its best Universities. He had been a teacher of English with the Peace Corps in Malawi and Uganda for four years and, with other sponsors. for two years in Singapore. He was now (in 1972) a "writer" of sorts and had always loved trains. So in the late summer of that year he set out to cross Asia and back by train - alone. After four months "on the road" - mainly by rail - he returned, rejoined his family and two years later published his first travel book -The Great Railway Bazaar. It was an instant success; and in the ensuing 40 odd years Paul Theroux novelist, teacher, man of letters and social critic has not only become the dean of travel writers with more than 10 books on travel to his credit but an established novelist, essayist and short story writer as well a published author of more than 35 books of non-travel books in his name. I read Bazaar when it was first published and became a Theroux fan on the spot; and since then I have read and cheered every one of its "issue"; but I have never written any comments on Bazaar. However, having just finished his last and perhaps his final travel book (The Last Train From Zona Verde,) I think it's time to say something about Bazaar which I have read again for this purpose. Bazaar starts from London in 1972 with a rail trip to Paris where Theroux boards the "Direct-Orient-Express" which is not to be confused with Agatha Christy's or Alfred Hitchcock's luxury train. There's only one sleeping car for Istanbul via Milan, Venice and Belgrade. And you wouldn't want any of your family to have to travel on it. There's no dining car. You are pretty much on your own for a couple of days, But Istanbul is, as always, engaging. Then it's the "Express" across Turkey to the border of Iran, another "Express" to Teheran, a flight to Peshawar and then the Khyber Pass Local and the Frontier Mail to Mumbai (then Bombay), Indian trains of the mid 1970s too numerous to mention here - Bombay, Simla, New Delhi, Calcutta. A train to Ceylon (before it was Sri Lanka). A flight to Burma (when it was still Burma). Then The Mandalay express. Up country through Vietnam (where the war was still winding down) . A flight to Japan. Tokyo. Kyoto. The fast Japanese trains. And then - by contrast - a voyage ("storm tossed" is the proper phrase for it) to the Eastern Terminus of the Trans Siberian "Express" in the USSR and ten days across Siberia in late December. (Can you imagine ten days on a train in a small compartment with another occupant and never a bath? You really have to love trains!) And, finally, three days after Christmas he's home It was a time when travel in most of the countries he visited was for the hardy and adventurous. There was no internet, no GPS,no email, no iPhone. You used the telegraph system such as it was to communicate with home. Credit cards were generally a thing of the future so you carried your money in a money belt and used bank drafts (when available) for your cash. The modern preventatives or analgesics for Delhi Belly, its children and cousins, were in the future. And personal cleanliness while traveling was obviously a luxury if it could be accommodated at all. Curiously Theroux has never to my memory commented on any of these things. Yes, I have read in some of his books where he has been ill, but we never read of the ordinary vicissitudes of travel -- problems which the rest of us have when we just go to New York. Nor do we nor have we read about his travel plans. Is it all catch-as-catch-can? What was the preparation for the trip? (Obviously there was and had been some preparation because he frequently writes about giving lectures or teaching, and there needs to be some advance work for this.) And where does he find all the books he talks about reading as he goes? They're great books for the time but none that I would expect to find in your corner book store. Now back to Bazaar . As I said I was hooked the first time I read it. And this time it was even better because using Google Earth and Google Maps one can get a pretty good picture of where he is, how he was traveling and what he was seeing. So this is Theroux in his first book, already at the top of his game and a book to spend an evening of two with now in 2013 just as it was when I read in forty years ago. And I guarantee you will like it too

A bazaar story of Paul,s travel a thru Asia and Russia. This book is from 1973 when he was a young man.

There is nothing like a good travel book to relax with after the usual stresses of the day, especially for those who might never expect to travel through, e.g., India, Japan, and Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express. The publication date of 1975 takes us back to those years when "hippies" were everywhere, including, as Paul Theroux informs us, on trains in exotic places. His descriptions of these personalities (and many others encountered) give us a picture of hardened, selfish, unrealistic individuals presumably on a spiritual quest. As great as this book is, and as highly recommended as it is, the reader's steadfast traveling companion can only be the author and what he sees and experiences, and Theroux sees through a glass very darkly. Travel experiences in retrospect have what can be identified as their highest and lowest points, highest meaning a moment of realization, a discovery of human goodness and genuine spirituality that brings the potential for a true change in outlook regarding human beings and human conditions. Theroux's books lack these latter nourishing views of life, so that the reader becomes as tired as he does near the merciful end of his months-long journey (with his usual heavy consumption of alcohol) on the Siberian Express, with everything utterly boring, and with time passing painfully slow The account has to be honest about "the way it is," but at one point Theroux is telling all of the insipid travelers he encounters that he is a dentist, in order to avoid engaging them about his lifework, causing one poor fellow to consult him about his decaying teeth. Theroux advises him to seek treatment as soon as possible, and gives him two aspirins.The author may not be able to be called a "misanthrope" in the strict definition of the word, but he comes close. So this is our traveling companion in the otherwise "great railway bazaar," and there is no letup in the way that he sees and experiences life.

It started off well. Before I got past the introduction I'd already decided I'd like this book and that the author seemed like my cup of tea. Theroux makes no apology for being brutally 'no frills' in his descriptions of places he's been and people he encountered on his travels - giving us the stuff that editors omit from their glossy magazine articles.Theroux train hopped for many years across Europe, Asia and Africa - he'd always thought of travel books as boring until he wrote this one. He quotes a handful of authors who he believes live up to this as "oddities" within the genre.Theroux does and excellent job of zooming into the interactions and bonds he built with fellow travellers and locals along the way.Around half way through the book I started to find it difficult to read - the book doesn't read like a story, with any kind of plot to make you anticipate what might happen next. The book reads like lots of mini descriptive snippets of scenarios, experiences and memories.I needed/wanted a bit of a story, or more insight in Theroux as the key character - the thread running throughout the book.The book will certainly leave vivid images in your mind since the author is skilled at using very vivid description to convey his observations but the lack of any threads made it hard enjoy.

Having lost myself in the beautiful writing craft if mister Theraux I feel wholly inadequate writing my simple observations down. It was my first Paul Theraux read. I am a happy and satisfied reading captive of his masterly and exquisite writing. As my now deceased father would have said, "Gosh this man can write." I thank Mr T for taking not only the time to travel, but the time penning his observations, thoughts and feelings down. There is no way I could had experience his travel routes in person the way I experienced the lives and cities and nature and cultures through the senses of Mr Theruax. And I was so sorry to read his wife waited not for him....four months away only.....honestly! Superlative read lived and written by a maestro.

Traveling in a pre Internet era was much harder work than it is now. Today we can, using our smartphones, book ahead, buy tickets, review timetables, book hotels, (call for help!) etc etc. This was not possible in the era of this book (1973) and travelers had to be much more intrepid, hard working and adventurous. Not knowing what's around the next corner is surely one of the key features of real travel. Not sure many people would have been really up for this kind of hard work but PT does it for us. We certainly get the sense of this in this book. Some sections are definitely better than others with, interestingly, the opening and closing sections being the strongest for me. It occasionally dragged and he is definitely not as entertaining as say, Michael Palin in Around the World in 80 days but he can occasionally be quite amusing and it's hard not to be impressed by his achievements both through his travel and his writing of it.

I considered Theroux’ first train epic markedly more enjoyable than his more recent travelogue, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo. The Railway bazaar is poignant, humorous, refined and raw tale all in one. No sugarcoating here - he gets into some real scrapes and tells it as it is. Dark Star was unnecessarily padded out with sections of other author’s works, verging on a literary review rather that a story to enjoy. Theroux has a slightly irritating habit (to me) of detailing things he claims he saw, which patently could not have been so. Eg, seeing monkeys in a forest picking their teeth with bamboo splints- it may be authors licence?- but it was incongruous with telling everything as it was. Some travel chapters in this book are snapshots of historical significance , such as crossing Iran (good luck with trying that now as an American) and riding the fragmented railway of Vietnam after the USA pulled its troops out of the war. Brilliant !!!!

This book, Paul Theroux's first travel book, was published in 1975 and has been held up as a classic travel book ever since. This version has an introduction written in 2008 by PT where he explores the idea of travel writing and describes the principles to which he subscribes.He has a writing style which reads like a novel. The people he meets are presented as caricatures which works well to draw a quick picture of the individuals. The problem with this is that they are all very difficult to relate to as PT seems to emphasise extreme characteristics and other elements he dislikes about people.PT comes across as someone not really enjoying his travelling although the level of detail in the book is superb. Also the experience of travel is easy to imagine due to the clever writing.I have found this book difficult to read but clearly lot of people do love it.