According to the Telegraph there are plans to put televisions in trains.
The idea is not a new one. One of the worst journeys I have ever undertaken was between Jammu and Srinigar in Autumn 1987. I was one of the last British travellers to visit Kashmir before the kidnapping got too bad. But it wasn’t the kidnappers which worried me most. It was the transport.
As those who have travelled in India will be able to tell you Kashmir lies in a valley in the middle of the Himalayas and the only cheap way to get there at that time was to travel by 30-year old bus along the alarmingly narrow roads which clung to the sides of the mountains. The journey took somewhere in the region of two days and there was no stopping for sleep.
Each bus had a massive television suspended from the roof and played videos of Indian massala movies (you know the ones – singing, dancing, murder, romance – a little of everything) non-stop for the whole journey.
It drove me utterly mental. The only shock worse than being subjected to the loud distorted singing and flickering images for the whole hellish journey was the answer of the German girl in the seat beside me when I asked if she was okay.
Yeah, I’m okay, I think – it’s just maybe some bad opium I got from the driver
