Living in London years ago, I sometimes saw, at Victoria station, the ornate brown and cream carriages of the British Pullman sitting in state on an adjoining platform, rose-pink lampshades gleaming on little tables inside, surreal among the landscape of London commuters, pigeons, and shuttling suburban trains. Once, I walked through Victoria's concourse behind a group of people who had luggage labels that read Venice-Simplon Orient Express and watched them disappear into the train, mysterious as the characters who climb into the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis's book, and who find another world beyond its doors.
Since then, I've travelled on plenty of trains: stored myself like a parcel for weeks on the three-tiered bunks of Indian railways; shared an oven-like compartment for the three-day journey from Islamabad to Quetta with a mother and daughter who lay somnolent the entire time; picked tea-leaves from the windows of a left-over Imperial train in Sri Lanka that levitated over mountains; played chess and drunk wine with strangers on overnight trains through Eastern Europe; and travelled the other leg of the old Orient Express route, which runs from Krackow through Budapest and Belgrade to Istanbul, where the Orient begins on the other side of the deep-blue Bosphorus. Cross-border trains are beguiling other worlds; the population constantly alighting or descending, the landscape changing with the language.
When the chance came to travel on the first Venice-Simplon Orient Express of the 2000 season, the first things I packed in my battered rucksack were items never required on any other overnight train journeys I've ever made - a velvet dress and a little bag that sparkled with sequins. After all, as the brochure said: "You can never be overdressed on the Orient Express". The Orient Express has been around in some form or other since 1883, when a train with luxurious sleeping cars made the journey from Paris to Bucharest. This was the heyday of the Grand Tour, when the wealthy trotted round the cultural capitals of Europe using the most comfortable means of transport they could find in the pre-airport age. Once the wagons-lits - the beautiful sleeping cars - had been designed, and the 12-mile Simplon tunnel opened in 1906, the Orient Express became the way to travel on the Continent.
The trains continued to run, except during the wars, in some form of depleted grandeur until 1962. Then most of the carriages were sold off and replaced by ordinary ones, and there was no dining car at all, as a hungry Paul Theroux discovered to his disgust when researching The Great Railway Bazaar. In 1977, the service stopped completely.
That might well have been that, had businessman James Sherwood not gone foraging around the auction houses in the 1970s and bought up as many of the old wagon-lits as he could find, and set about trying to create a train, with the emphasis firmly on specialised and luxury travel. The first journey of the restored Orient Express was in 1982, and the season now lasts from March to November. The train runs most often between London and Venice - a 31-hour journey - although there are also departures from Prague, Rome and Lucerne. And once a year, the train goes to Istanbul and back, to truly live up to its name. Boarding at Verona was a tad mortifying, as people on adjoining platforms rushed to photograph both the cream and navy carriages and the uniformed stewarts handing us up the steps. Snap, snap, snap went the cameras, while the stewards posed like the old pros they are. The amount of attention the train attracts was the same throughout the whole route: amazed children screamed and waved in delight from fields; cars stopped and hooted; motorbikes raced alongside; people out walking stood and stared as the train shimmied elegantly past.
The Orient Express is as elegant and beautiful within as without, with perfectly restored art-deco carriages which are wonderfully heady places to explore and examine. There are three dining cars, each one decorated differently. My favourite, was in Lalique glass, all panels of shimmery, silvery classical figures, and bevelled mirrors; another was done in panelling of exquisite floral marquetry; and another had rural scenes in deep rich colours of Chinese lacquerwork.
Most of the wagon-lits are different too, with varying marquetry work. My sleeping compartment, which doubled as spacious living-room by day, had polished art deco panelling, an ingenious little washbasin hidden in a cupboard, a radiator which is heated by the steward's coal-fire at the end of each carriage, a little table with a lamp, and an atmosphere so potent I began to feel like an extra in a period film.
Unsurprisingly, given the cost of the journey - £1,165 sterling per person, based on two people sharing a compartment - almost all the other passengers were middle-to-late aged. What was surprising, or just sad, was that so many of the couples on this expensive, romantic treat didn't seem to be speaking to each other at all. A man opposite me at lunch presented the woman accompanying him with a diamond pendant, but once the box had been opened, they didn't speak another word for more than an hour. And it was not a speechless-with-joy sort of silence.
Accents on the train were predominantly American and British, followed by French, German and Italian. There was one Irish couple aboard, celebrating a 60th birthday, some Japanese corporate groups and a few surreal-looking honeymoon couples, still literally looking bridal, as the women wore their tiaras and white wedding dresses for dinner that evening.
After dinner, I was expecting people to linger in the bar, which stays open as long as there are customers. We were travelling through a moonlit and translucent snowy Switzerland, but from about midnight, not a soul was left - except a few techies from a US computer company, who were recording sounds for a new game based on the Orient Express.
And the piano player. He stayed. And stayed. Doubtless, train motion is not good for the insides of any piano, but the baby grand sounded excruciatingly out of tune, and the repertoire was equally dire and repetitive. Listening to the umpteenth performance of Somewhere over the Rainbow and Tiptoe through the Tulips made me meditate on the title of Agatha Christie's famous crime novel, Murder on the Orient Express. Incidentally, her book is absent from the on-board shop.
Returning to my compartment that night, I found the steward had magicked a wonderfully comfortable bed out of nowhere, and with some sort of second sight, correctly deduced which book, from the pile on the table, I was currently reading and laid it on my pillow. I snapped up the blind and fell asleep watching the scattered lights of little Swiss towns in snowy valleys, and woke up in France to a knock on the door and the arrival of a breakfast tray.
Mid-day at Boulogne, we reluctantly left the train, and crossed by Seacat to Folkstone, where the British Pullman took us to Victoria, where once again, cameras went off like fireworks. So, is it worth it? Well, if you can afford it, the Orient Express is a wonderful and unique experience. Ask to be seated in the Lalique car for dinner and travel in the eastwards direction, to get the boat bit over in the beginning. Let's face it: arriving in Venice is a million times more romantic than arriving in Victoria station. And if, like many, you can't afford it, just remember you can still see the same scenery from the windows of other trains.
Information from Orient-Express, 0044171-8055060 or www.orient-express.com