‘Moonlight Express’ by Monisha Rajesh: Berth of a new dawn in the world of night trains

Name: Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train
Author: Monisha Rajesh

What do night trains offer that day trains and planes can’t?

Teja Lele

Updated At : 01:15 PM Sep 21, 2025 IST

Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train by Monisha Rajesh. Bloomsbury India. Pages 624. Rs 1,499

Book Title: Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train

Author: Monisha Rajesh

The train seems to be Monisha Rajesh’s metier. The British travel writer, who has earlier authored ‘Around India in 80 Trains’ (2012) and ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’ (2019), returns with ‘Moonlight Express’, a book devoted to the mysteries and pleasures of overnight rail.

Rajesh was born in Norfolk, and raised across England. Her earlier books established her as a patient observer of the social worlds that trains create; this one leans into the romance of the night train while never forgetting its inconveniences. It also arrives at an opportune moment, just as sleeper services are making a comeback.

Rajesh writes how after the pandemic lockdowns, “many people were nervous to fly, booking private compartments and taking the time to explore closer to home”. In 2022, Interrail had a record year of sales, “— and then I saw it, one line at a time, sleeper trains inching back out of the darkness”.

The book unfolds as a sequence of journeys taken in darkness: Paris to Vienna on a gently shabby sleeper, Vienna to Bucharest in surprisingly spruced-up compartments, Sofia to Istanbul in a haze of delays and disco music.

Rajesh excels at capturing what night trains offer that day trains and planes can’t: time to breathe, space for unexpected encounters, and a sense of suspension. Her prose turns luminous in these pauses: minarets glimpsed “like sharpened pencils” at dawn, or the realisation that “time was what these night trains were giving us”.

Her earlier books seemed structured by a numerical constraint (80 trains as an organising frame), but ‘Moonlight Express’ is looser, more thematic. Night trains become a way of thinking about how travel is changing. A decade ago, many sleepers were being cut back, seen as relics of another era. Today, travellers are returning to them in search of lower-carbon journeys, more comfortable alternatives to budget flights, and the rare luxury of waking up somewhere new.

Rajesh patches this revival into her narrative through lived examples rather than statistics: new services rolling out across Austria, cooperative ventures linking Brussels to Berlin and Prague, and Scandinavia’s renewed faith in overnight routes. The message is clear: the sleeper train is no longer a curiosity but part of Europe’s future.

The strongest sections, however, are not about infrastructure but about people: the businessman who books a berth “for the thrill of the night train”, honeymooners disillusioned by flat pillows, and families who prefer a moving bedroom to airport stress. On Finland’s Santa Claus Express, she indulges the kitsch as a parent; in Norway, she meets a coast guard officer who insists on travelling overnight out of climate principle. That said, she doesn’t gloss over accompanying flaws such as fitful sleep, faulty heating, and occasional headache. But those details make her journeys more believable.

‘Moonlight Express’ also doubles as a snapshot of the network. Some trains clatter along on carriages decades old; others gleam with newly-designed cabins. Luxury brands still trade on nostalgia, while the workhorse routes — Nightjet in Austria, Italy’s Intercity Notte, Sweden’s Snalltaget — carry students, weekenders, and commuters.

In Scotland, she contrasts the glamour of The Royal Scotsman with the more workaday Caledonian Sleeper. This contrast, between fantasy and function, lies at the heart of the book: sleepers are both romantic and routine, extraordinary and everyday.

The book’s timing feels deliberate. It was written when travel was under pressure, climate awareness was accelerating, and many of us were rethinking how we move through the world. Against that backdrop, Rajesh’s writing reveals how the sleeper train has been reborn: not as a museum piece but as a model of slow, responsible travel, focusing more on the journey than the destination.

— The reviewer is a travel writer

‘Moonlight Express’ by Monisha Rajesh: Berth of a new dawn in the world of night trains

Teja Lele

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