Thursday, May 10, 2007

Nice and relaxing but ...






... not the most spectacular scenery. The Overland passes through the rolling landscape outside Melbourne in a leisurely fashion (at one point it stopped for over an hour in the middle of nowhere to let a couple of freight trains pass), and afterwards the land is largely flat plains, farms and sheep and cattle holdings. Pretty comfortable ride, and certianly, lots of time to reflect and ponder. The other passengers were (as far as I could tell) entirely white, and largely in their golden years.

11h30 minutes to cover the 828km. (And one gains 30 minutes going into Australian Central Time. So now I'm 14h30m behind the US East Coast.)

Friendly staff (well aren't all Aussies friendly? :)) and one of them, this fellow from Adelaide, wants to go to India badly, specifically, to Dharamshala and see the Dalai Lama.

At some point, if I make it back to this continent, I definitely want to go on The Ghan up to Alice Springs or on The Indian Pacific to Perth.

Oh, I noticed at the newsstand (where I picked up the penultimate copy of the Economist. Boy I've been missing my Economist fix!) in Melbourne that Dawkins' "The God Illusion" is No. 5 on the bestselling charts here. Surprise surprise.

Now safely in Adelaide at my college friend's beautiful home. This is what his wife served up for dinner earlier. Yum.

4 comments:

Dogwood Dell said...

G,

Don't you have access to it online (as well as acquiring the weekly podcasts)?

Don't leave home without it!

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Oh I hate reading it online. Besides, doing that requires a lot more time connected than I tend to get when traveling. What time I do have goes in checking email and updating the blog.

masalai said...

What a pity about the Great Coast Highway. It really is spectacular -- though, as I mentioned, the Oregon Coast is rather comparable -- but obviously, it seems, only available for viewing from the highway. Clearly this was a task for Messrs Greyhound & Co. I hope you enjoyed the internal amenities of the train, such being the case.

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Oh, it was a nice relaxing journey nonetheless. Besides, I just adore trains.