MONISHA RAJESH takes readers on another exciting ride in her latest book, titled Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train. In this excerpt, because of a disruption, her first sleeper train is still hours away. The British Indian journalist, an avid rail buff, also wrote Around India in 80 Trains and Around the World in 80 Trains, which won a National Geographic Traveler Reader Award.
The Orient Express, the world’s most famous train, was marking its 140th anniversary and it felt fitting to embark upon my journey into the world of sleeper trains by retracing its original route. Contrary to popular myth, the Express d’Orient—its original title—was far from a single luxury train. Launched in 1883 by a Belgian businessman, the fabulously named Georges Nagelmackers, it was a regular passenger service and for the first six years the journey between Paris and Constantinople (now Istanbul) was undertaken using a sequence of trains and ferries and several sets of rolling stock (or carriages). Trains departed Paris for Vienna via Strasbourg and Munich, then ran through Budapest and Bucharest to the southern Romanian city of Giurgiu. From there passengers were transported by ferry across the Danube to the Bulgarian city of Ruse, where a final train transferred them to Varna on the Black Sea coast, ending with a steamer to Istanbul.
I felt tired just thinking about it. In 1889, however, the entire railway line was completed, and in June that year the first direct train departed Paris taking passengers all the way to Istanbul’s Sirkeci station. Two years later the service was officially renamed the Orient Express.
That afternoon I’d arrived by Eurostar into Gare du Nord and, in the bright winter sun, walked the hour-long route towards the Left Bank, past pollarded plane trees, their flaking bark patched like camouflage. The aroma of caramelized almonds warmed the air around the burned-out beauty of Notre Dame, where I’d watched couples sharing macarons on benches, whippets in couture coats quivering at their feet. Vendors in fingerless gloves folded hot crêpes, and with one in hand, I’d picked my way between tourists cycling in the wrong direction and crossed over the road to the bookshop Shakespeare and Company, where I located a copy of [Agatha Christie’s] Murder on the Orient Express. It had a striking cover featuring a vintage table lamp with the train running across a bridge at sunset. Now, two hours from Strasbourg, I thumbed through to where I’d left off in the story. For [the detective] Hercule Poirot it had been a snowdrift that had disrupted his journey, bringing the Simplon-Orient-Express to a halt “between Vincovi and Brod.” For me it had been an arson attack at Gare de l’Est.
The fire had begun under an area of track by a signal point. No one was injured but the blaze had damaged around fifty cables and disrupted services in and out of the station. I’d turned up in good time, full of beans and eager to board, only to discover that the NJ 469 to Vienna was no longer departing from Paris, but five hours later from Strasbourg.
At least the train wasn’t cancelled and—on the upside—it had given me time to find a bistro for crisp confit de canard and a glass of Pinot noir. However, at 10 p.m., when I boarded the connection to Strasbourg, the wind had turned nasty, the air sharp with ice as we crowded onto the concourse, tensions high, moods low, limp toddlers hoisted over shoulders and everyone shoving to get on. I remembered then how much of night-train travel involves killing time: reading in cafés; loitering in hotel bars and lobbies; praying for no delays. And yet, sleeper trains were well and truly enjoying a renaissance.
—“The Nightjet from Paris to Vienna”
Copyright Monisha Rajesh, 2025. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.