Time machine travel
Praveen Jadhav, an advertising professional, took a train journey last year. But it wasn’t just any other train that he hopped on to. Jadhav boarded the Venice-Simplon Orient Express that recreates the iconic Paris-Istanbul journey of the original Orient Express once every year. He says the trip – traversing through France, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey – was just as exotic as he had imagined and worth every penny of the steep price.
“In my childhood, I had devoured Agatha Christie’s novels, and ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ was one of my favourites. The charm of travelling in the original carriages from the 1920s made me imagine I was a character in a mystery pot-boiler and part of the days when the iconic train used to be a symbol of intrigue and romance,” he says.
Jadhav is not alone. Retracing the paths of famous explorers – and travelling on legendary routes – is a high that a few are determined to experience, whatever that takes. Former army Major HPS Ahluwalia climbed Everest as part of the first Indian expedition to the mountain in 1965. He saw central Asia from the summit of the world’s highest peak and instantly fell in love with it. “I vowed that one day I will explore this region,” he says. However, Ahluwalia was able to make the journey on the Silk Route only 30 years later. By that time he was on a wheelchair as a result of a bullet injury sustained during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. There were a lot of other bottlenecks as well, like organizing funds for the expedition and getting clearances. “It took me seven years just to get the required permissions from the Chinese government,” he recalls.
via Time machine travel – Times Of India.
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