Business travel
Travelling in India
All aboard the Vivek Express
Feb 3rd 2012, 10:20 by A.B.
A COLLEAGUE travelled through India recently on the world's eighth-longest train ride. Four days on the Vivek Express took him from Dibrugarh, a scruffy town in a remote corner of Assam, down to the southernmost tip, at Kanyakumari.
Fellow passengers, of course, offer the most. A companion in your correspondent’s cabin, who boarded in Dibrugarh, rides all the way south to Kerala. He calls himself Mr Kamil, tells stories of being a trader in coconuts and “small things”, and of roaming the country for work over the past 27 years. After so long on the rails, he says he has learned much about his homeland. Such as? “India”, he leans over to reveal, “is very, very big”.
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