Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

Theroux first made this journey in 1973, thirty-three years earlier. He was eager to make comparisons as he followed the old travel itinerary of The Great Railway Bazaar (with a few exceptions like skirting Iran and Pakistan and being able to enter Cambodia as it was no longer controlled by the Khmer Rouge, for examples).
Retracing his own steps affords Theroux the ability to look up hotels he previously visited and people he met thirty-three years ago. He is pleasantly surprised when they remember him and dismayed to learn others thought him a pompous jerk on his first visit.
In addition to writing about a journey, readers get a glimpse of Theroux's personality. I found it curious that he doesn't like people eating and walking at the show more same time (no street fairs for him). By 2006 he hasn't wanted to learn the lesson of his first marriage - it is self-indulgent to travel for four months, leaving a wife and/or family behind. The family sees this extravagance as abandonment. (Although the second wife was wiser thanks to technology. She demanded Theroux take a smart phone.) My favorite part of Ghost Train was Theroux's conversation with Haruki Murakami about his first marriage. It felt like an honest, soul-exposing confession. The real Theroux came out, author to author.
Theroux also gauges a country's cultural acceptance by their use of pornography. As the book goes on, Theroux's running commentary on the varying sex trades increases.
In terms of idioms, I felt Theroux was overly negative in his descriptions of towns: acid, broken, beleaguered, cruel, crummy, crumbling, dirty, dim, dark, derelict, dreary, dilapidated, disorder, desperate, decaying, fatigued, foul, filthy, gloomy, lifeless, muddy, miserable, melancholy, mournful, nightmare, neglected, poisonous, primitive, pockmarked, rust-stained, ramshackle, ragged, smoky, sticky, shadowy, stale, stink, stinky, sooty, tough, threadbare, unfriendly, ugly, wrecked, wasteland to name a few. But, as another aside, I love authors who use the word hinterland. Don't ask me why. I think it's a very romantic word. show less

He takes the same cross-continental train trip he took in The Great Railway Bazaar, but this time he's twice as old as he was. So, it's about changes to the countries and to himself. His travel books are always really good (observant, witty, unexpected, etc.) and to be honest they're all kind of the same, so it can be a cozy read, too.

I think I've read all of Paul Theroux's travel books and I have a weird dichotomous relationship with them. I tend to enjoy his descriptions of places I haven't been to, and tend to reject completly his depictions of those I know well. I can't forget his description, in "The Happy Isles of Oceania" of Melbourne as being known by the locals as "Smellburn". Really? Was someone pulling your leg or did you just make it up?

So this a retrace of the steps of The Great Railway Bazaar and as such, bound to be a bit self indulgent. We learn a little of Mr Theroux's character, but not much. He seems cold, aloof and solitary, and although he tells us that he spent much of his 1973 trip worried about his marriage, honestly if you've just gone show more galivanting the railways of the world for a year leaving your wife with 2 young kids, is it surprising if she's a bit frosty on the phone?

However, as I have never been to Georgia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan I enjoyed these chapters. As I have been to most of the places further east, I found it all a bit more problematic

Firstly India. Yes, India has a lot of people living there. Yes, navigating cities like Chennai and Mumbai can be stressful. But you can hardly expect the population to stay at home so that Mr Theroux is not inconvenienced by them on the pavement. And to condemn India's economic progress, which has drawn many out of poverty (although of course many remain) seems churlish in the extreme. As does praising Sri Lanka for its lack of progress - for sure Sri Lanka is beautiful and peaceful, but most of the population would do a lot for one of those call centre jobs he condemns.

If gets worse from here; there is an obsession with red light districts, prostitution and sex, that are glamorised in Thailand and to a certain extent in Vietnam, completely dominate his account of Tokyo (there is more to Tokyo than Love Hotels,Manga and Cosplay believe it or not, exotic though these may be) and Japan generally, and are drooled over in Singapore (but forget the section on child prostitution, which is almost certainly made up). Of course Mr Theroux never indulges - but he mentions not indulging so many times that there is a suspicion that he protesteth too much

And after Sri Lanka it's all just....trivial. He condemns places that have changed. He lionises those that haven't. He rants against governments that he doesn't like .....deservedly in the case of Burma, without enough explanation of what they are supposed to have done in the case of Cambodia, and entertainingly in the case of Singapore, which he really doesn't like (it seems that the Singapore government feel the same about him) and rants for pages about its defiencies, slating examples sometimes real, sometimes invented. But entertaining none the less

But overall, I wish he'd ended his trip before getting to India. show less

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is a sort of sequel to Theroux's earlier book "Great Railway Bazaar." Ghost Train was written thirty years after the earlier book. The author and traveler recreated the trip from Great Railway Bazaar thirty years later, as much as was possible. What the reader and the traveler found out was that parts of the world that were accessible thirty years ago are now closed.

I thought that Great Railway Bazaar, written back in 1975, was a vituperative account written by a snarky dissipated man who was obsessed with sex. It was a good travelogue but those attitudes of his were what stood out to me. The update was a bit different. In Ghost Train, the author retraces his travels from 1975 in 2005. The trip is show more different because the territory covered is different. In 1975 he couldn't go into the various Stan's of the USSR and in 2005 he could. In 1975 he traveled by train through Iran and in 2005 he couldn't. In 1975 he couldn't travel through Vietnam and in 2005 he could. He rode a bullet train in Japan, and spent a good deal more time there than he did in 1975. As a consequence of all these changes, the book, Ghost Train is different from the earlier book. Of course, the author is a different person now due to his age, with a more conciliatory attitude that shows in his writing. Don't get me wrong - he is still snarky at times, but it has a softer edge.

This was well worth the time it took to read. It is a grand journey told in a grand kind of voice. I would encourage people to read both books, to get a more rounded picture of the author, but if a straight travelogue is what the reader is after, read this later version of the trip. It is a better, though longer, book. show less

Paul Theroux undertook the journey he chronicles in his 1975 book The Great Railway Bazaar at the age of 33. Upon reaching 66, he decides to retrace his steps and undertake the journey by train from London to Tokyo and back again.

Inevitably, in the intervening years the political landscape has changed, meaning he is denied a visa to travel through Iran. Instead, he visits Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and the quite bonkers Turkmenistan, dominated by the despotic Turkmen Bashi, who insists on putting gold statues of himself up everywhere while his people starve.

Some of the places he does travel to again have changed quite radically. India and China are booming, although Theroux barely disguises his disgust at the exploitation of low Indian show more wages by western companies. Others are exactly the same: Singapore is still oppressively censored and Japan is portrayed as bland and arid except in its most rural areas, as it was in his earlier book.

Technology makes it easier to stay in touch with home (Theroux returned home after The Great Railway Bazaar to discover his wife at the time had been having an affair in his absence) although in more remote places his Blackberry functions as little more than a torch lighting his way to the bathroom at night on darkened trains.

Also like his other travel books, Theroux hooks up with other writers to help give him insight into some of the places he visits: he dines with Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul and the reclusive Haruki Murakami shows him Tokyo. It feels like namedropping to a degree, as in other places more modest folks in other places prove just as able as guides.

Theroux’s nose for teasing out points of interest in supposedly dull places and his sometimes undisguised grumpiness give the book a realistic feel: there’s no suggestion that, unlike some other travel writers, Theroux might be embellishing some of his traveller’s tales for literary effect.

I listened to this on audiobook and John McDonough’s excellent narration which really enhanced my enjoyment of it. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is an excellent example of a master travel writer at work. show less

Starting to read this book gives you the same feeling of pleasurable anticipation as embarking on the journey yourself! The author retraces much of his travel by rail and road across Asia thirty years previously in the 1970s, with such fascinating and romantic-sounding regions like Central Asian 'stans', the Indian sub-continent and Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia and Japan, and back by the trans-Siberian railway. Did he find the places much changed and modernised, or were they left behind in a time warp with everything faded like an old print?

According to Mr. Paul Theroux a travel writer should be able to make a decent living if he's capable of making breezy generalizations. This I inferred from a paragraph about Prince Charles, one of the many people you meet as you journey across Asia through Mr. Theroux' wonderful travelogue. The author does not refrain from sweeping declarations himself, from "a country's pornography offers the quickest insight into the culture and inner life of a nation" to "Ugly and soulless, China represented the horror of answered prayers, a peasant's greedy dream of development".

I found myself agreeing with much of Mr. Theroux' impressions of India, especially the ones about modernity and development and what those concepts translate into on the show more ground. In other parts of Asia, in Sri Lanka and Vietnam for example, the author does sometimes display a bit of the western liberal's tendency to romanticize when confronted with the untouched countryside and laidback village life, but he then walks back, cognizant.

The book takes you from London, to Paris, Romania, Turkey, Mary, Tashkent, Amritsar, Mumbai, Chennai, Colombo, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hanoi, Kyoto, Vladivostok, Perm and then back to London through Berlin. Some of those cities are close friends of mine, some are mere acquaintances, most I will probably never meet. It is nice then to have an observant and tireless guide like Mr. Theroux show you around. He also is kind enough to take the time to sit down and talk to two of my favorite authors, Mr. Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul and Mr. Haruki Murakami in Tokyo. On the way we meet other colorful characters, an obnoxious environmentalist in the train to Jodhpur ("a gargoyle in horn-rimmed glasses") and a creepy pimp in Lee's Singapore. Speaking of Singapore, the writer gives the country a scathing treatment, portraying it more as an Orwellian dystopia than as the uber-efficient city state we all hear of.

Ghost Train to the Easter Star is an eminently quotable book, with several interesting thoughtful observations, both original and borrowed. It is also, like many books ambitious in scope, sometimes flawed in its generalizations. But that's okay. This is not a book on economics or sociology, it is a book of impressions, and impressions filtered through perspective are imperfect by definition.

An enjoyable read. Recommended. show less