Rediscovering the joy of rail journeys

Dispatch from on board the Mumbai-Madgaon Jan Shatabdi Express

Just 4 months ago, I was living like a frog in a well. It had been 21 months since I had travelled anywhere, and I felt my bustling Bombay suburb of Andheri had everything I could ask for. A month later I found myself in Russia, where I took my first train ride in almost two years. That Astrakhan-Volgograd train ride was some kind of path-breaker for me…