Great Railway Journeys

While I've been on my Christmas Break, I've been scouring the TV channels for anything worth watching. It hasn't been an easy task but tucked away at nine o'clock each morning on BBC2 they have been showing various episodes of Great Railway Journeys of the World, and a true gem of a program it is. True some of the presenters are better than others but the travel and the trains are the important things and they have been marvellous.
A fair bit of my travelling has been done by train, in Mexico, in China, in Peru, in North Korea and it can be a lot of fun. I particularly recall a journey back in 1994, from Puno to Cuzco in Peru.

As a daily commuter I have little love for trains but as a traveller I realise that you have to learn to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. Therefore the news that we were to travel from Puno to Cuzco by an eleven hour train journey filled me with mixed emotions. The trip so far had hardly been uneventful. There had been problems from the outset. In spite of paranoia induced by dire warnings from all our local guides we had had the theft of a camera from a bag in Lima, the theft of a whole rucksack from a pile of guarded luggage outside a hotel in Puno and a slick mugging which thankfully had not resulted in anyone getting hurt. And we'd only been in the country for five days. The one person telling us, in the face of all the evidence, that there was no problem was our holiday company tour leader. Perhaps it was this that undermined our confidence in her glowing and optimistic descriptions of the train journey when we gathered in the bar the night before for a briefing.

All of our luggage, she said would travel with us and could safely be left unattended on the train at the various stops while we got off to look around the towns. No-one felt any confidence in this pronouncement and it was noticeable that when we actually made the journey there were always members of the group sitting around watching their own and other peoples luggage. It may have been, as she insisted, an unnecessary precaution but better safe than sorry is sometimes true.


The train was a creaky old fashioned thing although it was pulled not, as I had hoped, by an elegant old steam engine but rather by a dirty ugly old diesel. Inside, the compartments in our Pullman class coach were relative clean and comfortable even if it was a tight squeeze with all of the passengers and their luggage. The cases and rucksacks were forced under the seats, piled onto the overhead racks, hung from hooks in front of the windows or simply left on the tables. On the other hand as the Pullman class was all in numbered and ticketed seats at least all of the passengers could sit down which is more than I ever managed on my British Rail journeys to and from work.
As the journey began the realisation of just how long a span eleven hours might be started to register on us and it was with a mixture of anticipation and concern that we contemplated the day ahead. How would we pass the time? Some people had brought books with them, others packs of playing cards. I had neither. What would I do? Well, first of all there was food to be had. Attractive waitresses in very short red mini-skirts came from table to table taking orders for breakfast and lunch. The quality of my breakfast cheese sandwich was such that I instantly regretted my rash decision to order lunch at the same time. It was two pieces of bread so dry that they had the texture and taste of polystyrene with a slice of something yellow and very sweaty between them. I threw it out of the window, which seemed a far better option than eating it. While we were dining on this too humble fare a man came round selling maps of the route printed in five languages - one of which was English - with a printed guide to Machu Picchu. I bought one, as much to get some small change as to get something to read.
Outside we were heading through a mainly flat and dull landscape on the way to our first stop in Juliaca.


As the train rolled to a halt in Juliaca dozens of street vendors, mainly women and children, appeared running alongside the coaches and throwing their wares in through the open windows. They were selling all sorts of things - carpets, hats, jumpers, fruit, sandwiches, souvenirs. One of them tossed a white alpaca wool hat in the old cossack style in through the window and the women passed it around trying it on before one of them began to barter for it. Eventually she achieved a price that she was happy with and bought it.
We were scheduled for a forty minute stop at Juliaca, time enough to see the town around the station. Descending from the train we found the platform crowded with all sorts of people. Some of them were selling. Some were waiting. Some, like us, were looking around. Others were ostentatiously and self-importantly standing in their uniforms waving big guns around. I walked, a little nervously, past some of these military types and out of the station into the square, another Plaza de Armas. Like the similar squares in the other cities it was laid out around a central park where street vendors sold everything they thought that you might want to buy. I bought some delicious hot vegetable pasties from a woman keeping them hot in a metal tub packed with hot towels and bottles of unidentifiable purple fruit juice from a wheelbarrow.

After Juliaca the train wound first of all through some depressingly bleak urban sprawl. Dirty hovels lined the track while some of the poorest looking people that I have ever seen sat in the dirt selling bits of scrap metal and inedible looking food and torn ragged pieces of old clothing. No-one seemed to be buying. The train didn't stop here. This was a side of Peru reserved for the Peruvians and it was a very sobering experience. After a few miles we rolled clear of it and out into more green plains with the mountains visible only as a dark ribbon along the horizon.
Somewhere along the line we were served with lunch. My misgivings at breakfast proved to be well-founded. My plate consisted of bone-dry chicken, dryer rice and even dryer vegetables. After a few mouthfuls I gave up and ordered a bottle of beer. Then I made it two. They would, after all have to keep me nourished for several hours.


At Chuquibambilla while the engine refuled we walked around the station stretching our legs. A traditional Peruvian trio of pipes, drums and a kind of guitar played for our entertainment and their enrichment. After a while the certainty started to grow in my mind that I knew the tune they were playing. I listened carefully, following the melody. I turned to one of my fellow travellers.
"Isn't this 'Imagine' ?"
He started to scoff but then, as he paused to pay attention and hum along, he nodded. As we listened it moved smoothly into 'Michele', then on into 'The Long and Winding Road'. For twenty minutes we were treated to a medley of Beatles hits. Then, with a few Sol tossed into the basket to show our appreciation we were off again.


Now the scenery had changed. It was lush and green and we had passed the highest point of the journey and begun to wind down towards Cuzco. The mountains had marched briskly in from the horizon and were crowding the track. We stopped at a dozen tiny stations, always too briefly to descend from the train. We ordered and drank several more beers. We walked around the coach to stretch. We played cards. We slept. We talked. Eventually we ran out of things to do and sat around in silence.
At about eight O'clock in the evening, already two hours past our E.T.A. and thirteen hours after starting our journey we pulled into the outskirts of Cuzco. It was at least an hour later we reached the station. The line the whole way was crowded with people trying to sell things at the windows of the moving coaches. The train proceeded at the slowest of snails' paces. The closer we got to the station the more bogged down it became until it eventually halted in what seemed to be a siding where we had to fight our way through the crowd of locals to reach our minibus. The luggage was piled precariously on the roof and we climbed inside for the twenty minute drive to the Hotel Carlos V where I dumped my luggage, splashed two drops of water on my face and headed for a local Pizzeria to fill the gaping hole in my stomach.