RailEnquiry

Bunny and i both love train travel. Regrettably, though India has one of the biggest rail networks in the world, several factors deter all but the most determined of travellers from using this mode of transport.

Thanks to politicos and babus monopolising berths through their VVIP quotas, it's almost impossible to get reservations at short, or even long, notice. Then there is the sheer size of the country, which makes 40- and even 50-hour journeys not uncommon, too long for even diehard train buffs.

Britain, on the other hand, is ideally suited for exploration by train. Despite the 'Great' in Great Britain, the country is small enough to be traversed comfortably by train, from end to end and side to side. British trains are convenient and comfortable and generally punctual. But they do have a major drawback: they are hideously expensive, many rail tickets costing more than the equivalent air fare.

However, there is a way to get around this obstacle. Overseas visitors can buy in their home countries rail passes which they can use for virtually unlimited train travel in Britain. What we got was a pass which entitled us to travel anywhere within Britain on any four days of our choosing. Anywhere in Britain? Wow. So we began figuring out the longest distance we could cover in a single day, following the time-honoured Indian precept of 'Paisa vasool', which translates into getting the maximum value for your money, the biggest bang for your buck.

But in this case paisa vasool almost proved to be our undoing. For we got so caught up trying to calculate the farthest we could travel in a day, if we started very, very early in the morning and came back to our base camp in London on the same day late at night (Edinburgh, whose main street, Princes Street, is the loveliest main street of any city in the world? Inverness, the 'Gateway to the Scottish Highlands', which is even farther north? Penzance in Cornwall, close to the westernmost tip of Britain?) that the days sped by without our having travelled anywhere. At this rate we were in danger of running out of days in Britain before we ran out of passes or potential places to go to.

Paisa vasool be hanged. In the end we settled for the most scientific way of making a rational choice: Eenie meenie mina mo. And so, thanks to this infallible calculus of decision-making, we went to the historic city of Chester, with its ancient Roman ruins and its magnificent 12th century cathedral; Peterborough, also famed for its cathedral where the French monarch Pepin le Bref (literally Pepin the Brief, because he was so short) is buried; to Torquay in Devon, famed for its beaches and seafood; and the utterly charming town of Moreton-in-Marsh in the Cotswolds, where the stone-built houses seem to glow with a buttery light and are called 'bottled sunshine'.

The lickety-split, clickety-clack, clackity-split of the train's rails was like a sewing machine stitching together an ever-changing tapestry of sea-green meadows and pastures on which sheep and cattle grazed, dense copses of trees, the sudden soar of a church steeple around which a cluster of cottages huddled in gossipy congregation.

So in the end, thanks to our train passes, we did get to see a lot of Britain and to feel that our paisa had been sufficiently vasooled. And there's a bonus. Back in Gurgaon from our trip, Bunny and i are still woken from sleep early wondering whether we will have time to make it to Edinburgh (or should it be Penzance?) and back in a day. Better than any alarm clock. Jaldi jago, paisa vasool karo.