The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia

Theroux's loop eastbound begins at London's Victoria Station, and he became a travel writer the moment he boarded that first train in London. The cast arrives almost at once: fellow passengers Duffill and Molesworth appear early on like an old vaudeville team, and on the Direct-Orient Express a whole carriage comes marvelously to life. Victoria had been the main London station for continental services since 1920, replacing Charing Cross.

Visitor guidance: Victoria is a major central London terminus, easy to reach from anywhere in the city.

In Istanbul Theroux spends a day with the writer Yashar Kemal, and the outing takes up more space than his visits to the Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sophia. Sightseeing, he says, is an activity that delights the truly idle because it seems so much like scholarship. He prefers walking the streets and talking to people, and decides the city has stood still since Atatürk's death in 1938. Hagia Sophia, completed in AD 537, was the world's largest interior space.

Location precision: The book's Istanbul chapter ranges across the city; the pin marks Hagia Sophia, one of the sights he visits.

Visitor guidance: Hagia Sophia is now a mosque; check current visiting rules before you go.

Oil-rich Teheran reminds Theroux of Dallas. In bars that resemble saloons he meets American oil men, and that is the picture he sets down of a boom town. The pin marks the railway station, designed in 1928-29 by the Polish architect Władysław Horodecki, as the arrival point for a traveller by train.

Location precision: The book describes the city, not one building; the pin marks Tehran railway station.

In India Theroux reads Dickens and finds that a description of London from Martin Chuzzlewit perfectly captures contemporary Calcutta. He also ranks the cities by smell: Calcutta, he writes, smells of death and Bombay of money. Howrah station is the largest, busiest and oldest surviving railway complex in India, and its first public train ran on 15 August 1854.

Location precision: The book's Calcutta episodes are citywide; the pin marks Howrah, the city's main railway station.

Visitor guidance: A working station and one of the busiest in the world; expect crowds.

In Rangoon, now Yangon, Theroux called at the Pegu Club in the early 1970s and wrote about it in the book. Founded in 1871, it was a Victorian-style gentlemen's club of the British colonial period, where membership was limited to Caucasians only. The building has outlived the empire that made it: the first phase of its restoration was completed in 2018.

In Myanmar's Shan State Theroux wrote of the Goteik viaduct as "a monster of silver geometry in all the ragged rock and jungle, its presence was bizarre". American steel built it: it was constructed in 1899 by the Pennsylvania and Maryland Bridge Construction Company and opened in 1900, and was then the largest railway trestle in the world. In August 2025 Myanmar's military government said rebels had destroyed it; a rebel group denied responsibility and said the military bombed it.

Like many visitors to Bangkok, Theroux is struck by the city's carnal side, but he has Calcutta and Bombay to measure it against. His verdict: Bangkok smells of sex, but this sexual aroma is mingled with the sharper whiffs of death and money. The pin marks Hua Lamphong, the former central station; long-distance trains moved to Krung Thep Aphiwat Central Terminal in 2023.

Location precision: The book describes the city as a whole; the pin marks the former central station, Hua Lamphong.

Visitor guidance: Hua Lamphong no longer handles long-distance trains; check before travelling.

Riding the Huế-Danang passenger train, Theroux writes: "Of all the places the railway had taken me since London, this was the loveliest." In Vietnam he also corrects the popular image of Americans as imperialists, noting that, unlike the French, they built nothing of lasting value in the country. Huế station is today considered one of the most beautiful railway stations in Vietnam.

Location precision: The scene is the ride from Huế towards Danang; the pin marks Huế station, where it starts.

Visitor guidance: A working station; trains still run south from Huế towards Danang.

Tokyo Central is the turning point of the loop. In the city Theroux delineates the various stages of Japanese drunkenness, attends a show at the Nichigeki Music Hall, and watches crowds of surgically masked people waiting patiently for the light to change. A society without jaywalkers, he worries, might indicate a society without artists. Tokyo Station is the busiest station in Japan in terms of scheduled trains.

Location precision: The book's Tokyo scenes are across the city; the pin marks Tokyo Station, the publisher's "Tokyo Central".

Visitor guidance: Tokyo Station is in Chiyoda's Marunouchi district.