Trains, dunes and daydreams: Why I can’t wait to ride the Etihad Rail

Rail journeys are an enduring fascination for me. I can’t wait to see trains snaking across the UAE, and I will be on one of them the first week itself. We now know that the Etihad Rail passenger service will start next year, and I’m keeping my eyes peeled to find out the start date.

The UAE got a taste of train travel with the Dubai Metro. I boarded it the day after the inauguration on September 9, 2009, and the trip from City Centre station to the Mall of the Emirates is still fresh in memory. But then train rides are very different from metro journeys. I know that.

Train trips were regular early in my career, riding the Island Express to and from Bengaluru. The Kanyakumari-Bengaluru train kept Keralites in the Karnataka capital linked to their hometowns. The day trips on humid days can be tiresome, but the balmy weather in the Garden City of Bangalore awaited.

It wasn’t my favourite train. That has to be the Coromondel Express, which plies the Chennai-Kolkata route. I don’t know why. I met some interesting people onboard and watched the changing landscape as the train sped from Tamil Nadu through Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Crossing River Godavari on a railway bridge high above the gushing waters was the highlight of the journey before the arches of Howrah Bridge loomed ahead the next day as we reached the Howrah station in West Bengal.

I have travelled a fair bit across India, but the most picturesque sights were during the train trips through Kerala with its striking greenery and the undulating waters of the vast backwaters. Two trips top that — the train ride to Edinburgh and Alaska: both of them provided breathtaking scenery throughout the journey.

Which was the best? It has to be the train to White Pass Summit from Skagway, Alaska. That wasn’t a passenger train but a tourist ride with a gleaming green and yellow diesel engine hauling beautifully restored coaches along a route lined by conifer trees beside a fjord carved by a glacier. The 172km railway line built in 1898 took me on a journey into the past known as the Klondike Gold Rush.

The train to Edinburgh was different as it whizzed past areas awash in natural beauty: farms with pretty houses, little bodies water and grazing cattle and sheep. When I alighted at Waverly and walked out on a rainy afternoon, the sight of Scott Monument greeted me. That was just the beginning of an amazing holiday.

I’m sure the Etihad Rail will bring the magic of train journeys to the UAE next year. The trains will emerge from the Al Maha Forest in Abu Dhabi and zoom past the shifting sands and majestic dunes in Dubai before skimming over the bridges of Sharjah, vanishing into the tunnels of the Hajar mountains and reaching Fujairah on the west coast.

That I’m sure will be an incredible experience. I just can’t wait.