A Great Train Journey i would still love to do

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Cappy
If you are like me a smell of a burnt or chard steak on the barbie and the memories come back of the Indian coast, We did a run that went from Karachi, Goa, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, then Rangoon in Burma, then Singapore, going pass the spice islands and the smell of sandalwood was the best, cleared the nostrils of India
Cheers Des

[happy daze john in oz]

Bombay airport in 1983, the international terminal had been closed due to a fire there.
We had to sit on the tarmac with temp of about 42 degrees with all doors open.
Thought the air had gone black, no only the flies that came to see us.

Return journey the terminal was open.
Better had it not been, the dunny in there was something to behold, no doubt at some time it would be emptied but not today, or yesterday, or before the fire by the smell and look.

Kind of makes you think twice about going to an Indian restaurant for dinner

[john walker]

In the early 80's I was working in the Southern Sudan on an 8 week on 4 week off roster, after my first tour it being January and freezing in the U.K. I decided to spend my rest period looking round Kenya. At that time there was still a slow train service running from Nairobi to Mombasa it used to leave Nairobi in the afternoon and arrive in Mombasa the next morning taking about 15 hours. It really was a relic of our colonial past with liveried waiters and porters serving an evening meal and drinks and then turning your train compartment into a sleeping carriage. I barely managed to sleep as the continuous clunketty clunk of the slow moving wheels took some getting used to. The train journey was worth it as you travel through some fantastic safari areas at daybreak before arriving in Mombasa with a lot of game around which certainly beats the usual urban scenery of most train journeys.