Most travel is about arriving. A few railways, though, were built through such difficult country that the ride itself became the point. Engineers had to negotiate with mountains, gorges, bogs and fjords, and the routes they settled on still show the argument.
That makes a train window one of the better frames in travel.
Start close to home. The Nilgiri Mountain Railway climbs from Mettupalayam in the plains to Udhagamandalam in around five hours, which is slow enough to notice almost everything. On its steepest stretch, the train uses a toothed rack rail to haul itself uphill, past tea gardens, eucalyptus and a long series of tunnels and bridges. It is part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing, and during heavy rain, landslides occasionally pause the service.
Across the Palk Strait, the hill-country line between Kandy and Ella is one of the most photographed railway journeys in Asia. The train winds through tea estates and mist, with waterfalls appearing beside the track, before crossing the Nine Arches Bridge near Ella. Services through the hills returned this year after months of repairs following Cyclone Ditwah, which makes the journey feel a little less taken for granted.
In Switzerland, the Glacier Express runs between Zermatt and St Moritz in roughly eight hours. Along the way it crosses 291 bridges, passes through 91 tunnels and climbs over the Oberalp Pass at more than 2,000 metres. It describes itself, with some honesty, as the slowest express train in the world. The large panoramic windows exist for a reason.
Norway's Flåm Railway is short but dramatic. In about 20 kilometres it drops roughly 860 metres from Myrdal, on the mountain plateau, to the village of Flåm at the edge of a fjord, making it one of the steepest standard-gauge railways in the world. The train stops at the Kjosfossen waterfall, where passengers step out into the spray before carrying on downhill.
Scotland's West Highland Line is less about altitude than emptiness. From Glasgow, it crosses Rannoch Moor, a stretch of bog so soft that parts of the track were laid on a floating base of brushwood and earth. Further on, the Glenfinnan Viaduct curves over the valley on 21 concrete arches. The seasonal Jacobite steam train that crosses it has become familiar to many from the Harry Potter films, but the landscape was impressive long before.
In New Zealand, the TranzAlpine crosses the South Island from Christchurch to Greymouth in around five hours. It begins on the flat Canterbury Plains, follows river gorges into the Southern Alps, passes Arthur's Pass and then descends through beech forest towards the west coast. Few journeys show such a complete change of landscape in a single day.
The best advice for any of these routes is fairly ordinary. Travel in daylight, leave the phone alone for a while and let the landscape do the work. A window seat helps too.
A good railway journey is not a delay between two places. It is a place of its own, moving just slowly enough to be seen.
For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.