To know trains is to love them. Cross-India sojourns thundering along its central artery west to east and back find favoured status in memory’s locker, accessible and instantly gratifying. To put it mildly, the Seward Express from Anchorage to Kenai was hardly Howrah-Ahmedabad Express. Catering to tourists alone, it wasn’t a ‘working train’ and its embellishments indicated likewise. Carriages with glass roofs and dining cars with picture windows to the landscape rolling by submerged the guilt of travelling in such high style in sheer luxury. Outside the windows though, the raw ruled. A day before, passengers had seen stages of a wolf hunt of a moose and sighting orcas (killer whales) from the train wasn’t unheard of. Backyards of urban Alaska were no ordinary backyards either with little planes hangered in kitchen gardens while cars did duty at front doors. Grand View Pass, snow submerged even at the end of May, as the train rumbled through; a cannon being fired in advance of it to let any loose snow fall in to be cleared. The sea a constant companion, soothing and surging simultaneously, alongside a mode of travel so familiar, a terrain so distinct.
[Part of the Series: Notes from the Last Frontier]
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