Snug, I stretched in the darkness, waking as the thump of wheels slowed to the tempo of a heartbeat. I\u00a0could sense that the train was approaching our destination, so shuffled down the berth, easing up the blind to find a ruby necklace of brake lights running parallel with the tracks.<\/p>\n
It had rained overnight and the road was slick, the sky a midnight blue, a D-shaped moon fading in the corner. Dawn was minutes away, and I could just make out the jumble of houses on hills, lights flicking on as though fireflies lay between their folds.<\/p>\n
I stepped into the corridor as the train curved around a lake that gleamed like a pool of pink metal as first light fell upon its surface. Around me, passengers were now zipping up\u00a0bags, brushing their teeth and locking berths into place, pausing to look out of the windows as a pair of minarets rose into view like sharpened pencils. Istanbul\u2019s skyline was coming\u00a0into focus.<\/p>\n
The writer and family on the Santa Claus Express in Finland. Photograph: Monisha Rajesh<\/p>\n
Five days earlier, I\u2019d set off from London St Pancras hoping to retrace the original route of the Orient Express via Paris, Vienna and Bucharest, with the final leg passing through Sofia. Journeying 2,450 miles by rail, I now felt a deep satisfaction as the doors banged open and the sound of the second call to prayer greeted me on the platform. But I felt something else too:\u00a0a rekindling of my love affair with\u00a0night trains.<\/p>\n
It all began in 2010, when I spent four months riding around on the trains of Indian Railways<\/a>. At first the rail network represented little more than a mode of transport, a means to\u00a0an end. But I soon realised that the\u00a0trains possessed spirit and personality, each a character in its\u00a0own right. As much as I enjoyed journeys by day \u2013 hot chai in one hand, fresh samosa in the other \u2013 and constant commotion around me, I\u00a0relished the nights. It was after dark when I would find peace in the cool of the open doorway, talking to hawkers and ticket inspectors, making notes on the day gone by. As others slept, life beyond the carriage continued and I stayed awake to bear witness to it: a pack of pye-dogs being fed down an alley; bored drivers playing cards on car bonnets; the twentysomething winking at me from the back of her boyfriend\u2019s moped as\u00a0they careered towards the beach. Each moment felt like a gift, and while I hadn\u2019t realised it\u00a0at the time, I was already immersed in slow travel.<\/p>\n I found passengers who travelled solely for the thrill of the night train: groups of colleagues, young families, honeymooning couples<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Three years ago, I made that jaunt from London to Istanbul, which involved three sleeper services: a shabby old Nightjet from Paris to Vienna; the surprisingly smart Dacia from Vienna to Bucharest; and the severely delayed Sofia-Istanbul Express. Three extraordinary journeys with wildly differing compartments, companions and scenery. Still, the madness of sharing with strangers, drinking whisky at 10am and trying to sleep to trance music was enough to spark an adventure that would take me from Palermo to Peru as I documented the resurgence in night trains.<\/p>\n Nice-Ville station. Photograph: Peter Cavanagh\/Alamy<\/p>\n Only a decade before, such journeys were fizzling out in Europe, the rise of budget airlines and high-speed rail leading to a cull of sleeper services. But who knew the world was going to shut down? After lockdown, rail travel began making its way back on to travellers\u2019 radars. With climate change undeniable, people were keen to control their carbon footprints by exploring closer to home. Private companies, such as the Belgian\u2013Dutch co-operative European Sleeper, popped up with plans to launch new sleepers across Europe, and existing operators \u2013 including Sweden\u2019s Sn\u00e4llt\u00e5get and Austria\u2019s Nightjet \u2013 wanted to extend routes, encouraged by campaign groups such as Back-on-Track<\/a> and Oui au train de Nuit!<\/a>.<\/p>\n With a bucket list of trains in hand, some of which were yet to start running, I set off to discover whether sleeper trains still held an allure \u2013 and who was using them. It didn\u2019t take long to find out as I swept up the wintry backbone of Sweden on the Norrland night train to Narvik, surrounded by\u00a0a\u00a0cohort of school teachers from Stockholm on a skiing weekend to Kiruna in Swedish Lapland. In the din of a neon-lit dining car they offered me creamed cod\u2019s roe on crispbread while explaining where I could chase the northern lights. They told me they regularly used the sleeper for weekends away, in both summer and winter, preferring the overnight ride to\u00a0frantic queues at the airport \u2013 and the fraught disposal of liquids, they added, shaking bottles of wine in my face.<\/p>\n The Brussels to Berlin sleeper passing through the Netherlands. Photograph: ANP\/Alamy<\/p>\n During the period of the midnight sun in Norway, I met Ludwig, a chief mate for the coastguard who commuted all the way to Troms\u00f8 at the northern tip of the country in a refusal to contribute to climate change. He had travelled the route more than 20 times and recounted his encounters with elderly women and happy drunks who shared their moonshine, presenting him with cured deer hearts in return for companionship. And on the Santa Claus Express in Finland, I tucked into smoky reindeer stew with my children, surrendering to the journey\u2019s festive charms as snow fell around us, the train sweeping quietly up the country to the depths of Finnish Lapland, where the sun never rose and the howl of huskies carried across the treetops.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n I\u00a0soon accepted the reality of being slung around as I slept, brakes wailing as the trains jerked to a halt in\u00a0the small hours<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I found passengers travelling solely for the thrill of riding on a night train: on the Good Night Train from Brussels to Berlin, pouring out wine and beer; young families spread out and enjoying the space on the Intercity Notte from Rome to Palermo; and honeymooning couples loving the thrill of the Intercit\u00e9s de Nuit between Paris and Nice.<\/p>\n Of course, despite the romance of it all, I\u00a0soon accepted the reality of being slung around as I slept, brakes wailing as the trains jerked to a halt in\u00a0the small hours. Carriages were sometimes too hot or too cold, blankets too thin, pillows too flat, and companions just too damn loud. I\u2019d sometimes wake with a headache, dreading the border crossings where I\u2019d have to haul my bags or sleep with my passport in hand to make checks faster and more efficient. But all was forgiven during those moments of pure magic, when I\u2019d nudge up the blind, eager to see where we were. Would the sun be firing streaks into the sky? Would the moon be hanging on? I\u2019d sit in my blanket, coffee in hand, watching as farmers fed their flocks and children caught my eye from bedroom windows, a friendly wave never failing to make my day.<\/p>\n In Istanbul \u2018I looked out of the window as a pair of minarets rose into view like sharpened pencils.\u2019 Photograph: Mauritius Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n Even when we were delayed, no one\u00a0seemed to mind \u2013 my fellow passengers shrugging, pottering around and enjoying the extra time to read, chat or snooze. Because time was what these night trains were giving us. Time to reconnect with friends as we moved through the darkness, with nothing but our own reflections in the window to distract us as we drifted into a state of confession, or opened up to family as though locked in a therapist\u2019s room for the night. I had time for myself too, time to slow down and shut off, watching as the world whipped by my window and my thoughts calmed to a kind of meditation.<\/p>\n Since I began my journeys, new routes have opened, old routes have returned and the feeling is one of hope that night trains will stand the test of time. I don\u2019t know what the future holds for them, but I know that when I\u00a0board a night train and shift up to the\u00a0window as we set off beneath the moonlight, it feels like coming home.<\/p>\n Monisha Rajesh\u2019s new book, Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train (Bloomsbury, \u00a322), is published 28 August. To support the Guardian, order your copy for \u00a319.80 at guardianbook<\/a>shop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Snug, I stretched in the darkness, waking as the thump of wheels slowed to the tempo of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187],"class_list":{"0":"post-366767","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115077128154402087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}