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WEI LENG TAY FOR TIME
Right on track: From left, Botos, Abdoolcarim, Wood
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Neither planes, buses nor boats provide the same sense of striking out for new horizons as does the diesel or steam engine. Every hobo song, honky-tonk tune, even Japanese enka warble, seems to confirm that you ride the rails when you're yearning for adventure. There is romance in a ride up the tracks, a desperate longing measured in the clickety-clack of steel wheels over ties, the rhythmic clanging of the coupler.
In previous years, TIME's Asian Journeys toured the continent via back roads and sea-lanes. This year, we took to the tracks, striking out for parts unknown, boarding the big steam engines and hopping the boxcars across the continent, from the Khyber Pass to Kyushu, from Myanmar to Moscow. We found that every Asian country views trains through a unique historical prism. In Pakistan and India, the tracks are the binding vestiges of colonialism, the steel and beam reminders of an England departed and the one great gift it left behind. For Japan, the trains have come to represent yesterday's vision of what tomorrow could be, both a symbol of catching up and, in the case of the famous bullet train, surpassing the west. And in China, the future of the country, the drawing together of disparate peoples and places, is hinged in many ways on one of the most ambitious rail-building programs in history.
Off the rails. Railroaded. On track. Mainlined. In the hopper. The light at the end of the tunnel. Railway terms have enriched the English language almost as much as the trains have enhanced our lives. No one understands this better than TIME's man in charge of special projects, Senior Editor Zoher Abdoolcarim. Zoher, who joined TIME five months ago from recently departed sister publication Asiaweek, convinced some of the world's best travel writers to come aboard for this epic journey. In addition, TIME photo editors Lisa Botos and Maria Wood talked some world-class snappers into getting their tickets punched. So sit back, relax and enjoy as TIME's Asian Journey Express leaves the station.
Read more about our contributors here
KARL TARO GREENFELD, EDITOR, TIME ASIA
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