The rail thing for luxury travel

GO FEEDBACK:The Palace on Wheels across India has the reputation of being one of the great and most luxurious train journeys of the world. KEVIN PILLEYhops on board

* THE WHISKY wallah poured out our “Red Blazers”. Arthur made the toast. “To the POWs!” We chinked and swallowed, shuddering simultaneously.

“Indian whisky’s an acquired taste. It’s a real culture shock,” observed Arthur, a GP from New Zealand. We were making our way through the Rajasthan night and the top shelf of the train’s bar. The “khidmatgars” or personal attendants hovered.

The Palace on Wheels has the reputation of being one of the great and most luxurious escorted train journeys of the world. It runs every week throughout the year apart from May to July, departing from and returning to New Delhi’s Safdarjung station.

The seven-day “week in wonderland” trip around “man-made marvels and the wonders of nature”, which costs from $2,460 (€1,720), is further described in the official guff as “a splendid and enchanting royal journey through the bygone era of the erstwhile Maharajahs”.

Lavish trains were the preferred mode of transport for India’s aristocratic super-rich until they were withdrawn in 1947. The 14-carriage Palace on Wheels is a modern tribute to those days. The service began in 1982.

Passengers are given a welcoming “arrival kit” comprising a sandalwood paste dot in mid-forehead and a complimentary authentic-looking turban. And an option on a Dutch wife.

The third eye is an Indian custom. The turban is a red handkerchief stapled very cleverly to a brown paper carrier bag, which means it will keep its shape even if you fall asleep in it, and the Dutch wife is an optional his or hers bed bolster.

Travelling through the night in “plush” berths complete with en suite (“attached”) toilets and “luxury geysers” (showers), you wake up every morning to a new city and a new scrum. Everyone wants to see the legendary Palace on Wheels. Meeting it is a social occasion.

The passengers are called “POWs”. Everyone rolls out the carpets, especially the owners of the state-run handicraft shops which are an integral part of every day’s sightseeing itinerary.

India’s most famous train, sadly diesel now rather than steam locomotive, but still apparently “resounding with rich heritage” and “reverberating with the aesthetics of yore” is as good a place as any for an extended Indian degustation session.

Lunches are taken at places such as the Rambagh Palace Hotel in Jaipur. Built in 1835 for the queen’s favourite handmaiden, it was converted into a royal palace in 1925.

For many passengers the highlight of the tour is the Taj Mahal. For others, it’s the jolting ride in a howdah on top of an elderly arthritic elephant up to the 16-century Amber Fort of Jaipur. Or the city’s Hawa Mahal or “Palace of Winds”, a sandstone screen used by royal ladies to watch the road below without being seen.

Others praise the visit to the Ranthambhor National Park, the camel safari or the evening spent under the stars in the Sam Sand Dunes in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, having had to see the 12th-century fort and “havelis” (merchant houses) in the historic “Golden City”.

All fortunate to travel on the Palace on Wheels have their own memories. Mine is lunch at the Lake Palace of Udaipur, featured in the James Bond film, Octopussy. I love curry.

In the lily pond garden of the island palace in the middle of Lake Pichola surrounded by the Aravilis hills, the hotel’s chef gave me a curry history lesson.

In the days of the Maharajahs the highest paid of the memsahib’s servants was the cook or “bobachee”. Curry, cabob, pilau and mulligatawny, kedgeree and tandoori were the staple meals. “Milagutannir” is Tamil for pepper water. “Cabob” was 17th-century goulash; chicken boiled in butter and stuffed with raisons and mango. Curry comes from the Tamil “kari” (to eat by biting) and was just bruised spices used to flavour rice and cereal dishes . . . and disguise old meat.

Lap-of-luxury Indian food, I learned by travelling on the Palace, is best and traditionally complemented with Bengali “arrack” or fermented palm, Persian Shiraz, “Planter’s Punch” (rum and lime) or Madeira. And, as a final touch of extravagance, “jugri rum” with a piece of hot gold dropped in it.

The Palace on Wheels claims it offers five-star, modern luxury travel. But it has had to make concessions. Ice cubes are now served on board instead of ingots.

Presumably, bullion would only slow the train down.

The POWs, should you want to be one, are generally a cosmopolitan lot. Of the 70 on-board, I got to know a couple of South African cane farmers who had just attended a molasses conference in Delhi, a French couple who didn’t like each other, a pair of Spaniards, a very odd man from Jersey, two honeymooning “Puppies” (they introduced themselves as Punjabi yuppies), an affluent Dick van Dyke lookalike from California and the Kiwi dentist Arthur and his wife Pam, a former North Island junior roller skate champion.

There are many things people divulge while wearing a turban and drinking in the scenery and atmosphere of India. And its whisky and wine. And food for thought.

palaceonwheels.net