This post chugs along like an old train, patiently lingering over every slice of life on the way, but not stopping anywhere. Tim Hannigan introduces you to a new face, a new corner of India in every sentence of this post, bringing alive both people and places:

The trains, rolling with a long gait over the country, and the shadows of the still, furred fans circling on the grimy roof, and the glimpses of stretches of white water, and rain-shined platforms and dripping slums. And the vendors coming along the corridor, and hot puri-sabzi on the platform at Allahabad, and the little bow-legged egg-wallah – “aaaaaawwwww-ondhuuuuuuuuu, boil-ondhuuuuuuuuuuuuuu” – squatting and shelling an egg with a spoon, slicing it in four and sprinkling it with salt and cumin, while he balanced on his toes to the roll of the train, and how good it tasted. And the warm-faced village woman on the Bengal country train, going to the Bangladesh border who thought I was Kashmiri and laughed and laughed and laughed when I told her I was British, and gave me an orange and was still laughing when she got down at the next halt.