Traveling across the USA by train is an unique way to see and experience the variety and scale of the country. We broke up the journey, stretching it into a 17 day trip in August / September 2004, by stopping at Glacier National Park for five days and visiting Chicago before reaching New York City.
To begin this cross country journey, we went north by train to Oregon, where we had to resort to taking a replacement bus to meet our connecting train that left Portland before we were due to arrive. Once on the next train east, we made our way toward Glacier National Park.
After spending time in national parks, arriving in a big city like Chicago was a big change. During the three days we spent here we visited several museums and saw a Chicago Cubs baseball game.
New York City was our final destination on the Trans USA train journey. Here we visited a variety of locations in the city, including the United Nations, Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village and Central Park.
Two days were spent in the Lake Titicaca region, including a home stay with indigenous Aymaran families on one of the islands. Getting to the lake was half the fun, via a 10 hour train trip over a 14,200 foot pass and through the beautiful stark altiplano landscape.
To get to Zambia, we crossed the Zambezi River by public ferry and walked across the border.
After two days on the train, we finally arrived in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. We splurged and stayed one night in a very nice Holiday Inn. After that we went to Zanzibar for three days.
After leaving our hosts in Mumbai, we took a 21 hour train trip to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.
After flying back to Delhi from Sikkim, we made our way around Rajasthan for 10 days. The first five days were spent visiting two national parks.
We spent the last few days in Rajasthan taking the train to visit the cities of Jaipur and Jodhpur. Jaipur is known as the Pink City and we saw the City Palace, Observatory and the Palace of the Winds.
