The memory is as clear as day: the train is surging along the tracks and through its curtained window I can see the landscape flying past in a blur of dun-coloured pastures and swaying grass. My little sisters and I stand at the window and stare out at the passing world. The youngest is not yet two, and though she will grow to be six feet tall one day, for now she must stand on tiptoes to take it all in.
We see children running beside the train, laughing and waving. My mother opens the windows; fresh air surges into our compartment, blowing our hair back and stinging our eyes. She finds the sandwiches left over from yesterday's lunch and throws them to the children. My sisters and I watch, transfixed, as they come to a halt and scramble about in the dirt for our gifts, tightly wrapped in grease-proof paper.
The train chugs on, and the children shrink to specks on the horizon. The sound of the train floods the compartment now, hot metal wheels gripping a hot metal track, the repetitive forward lurch reassuring us of progress — from the Goldfields of the Transvaal to the flat expanses of maize fields in the Orange Free State to the haunting, empty space that is the Cape's Karoo.
That very first train journey came to mind last week as I travelled by rail from Singapore to Bangkok on Belmond's Eastern and Oriental Express.
As we crossed the Johor Causeway from Singapore into Malaysia, it struck me that the railways lines that cut through the countryside can also underscore the divide between rich and poor; no matter how elegant the train, class disparities and the struggles of daily life cannot be shielded from the passengers who travel on them.
Railway lines take the path of least resistance and the routes of most gain, and so they bring us right up close to the people who live alongside them. Sitting in our beautifully-appointed compartment, crossing from Singapore onto the isthmus of mainland Malaysia and the protuberance of southern Thailand, we are given a unique insight into the lives of the people whose countries we are passing through.
We can watch them tending their vegetable plots, hanging up their washing, nursing their babies. We can see how they make their living, harvesting endless rice paddies, baking bricks, sorting through scrap metal. We can peer into the windows of these