the ghan.

 










     I have a thing for trains. I'm a kind of trainspotter without actually taking account of the trains; looking at them is enough for me. I've done my share of train trips in Poland and even bigger one in India, where I realized being more than 30 hours on the train is no fun (as to verify the romantic concept of the Transsiberian 7-day long journey). Still, trains have always been there in my life and one of my favourite places in cities are train stations.

    Years back, in Australia I happened to "discover" The Ghan - transcontinental train connecting two edges of the country, being the second longest train trip in the world (54 hours and nearly 3000 km). I visited the train station in Alice Springs where The Ghan stops for 4 hours and peered inside the compartments. Classical looking as being taken from the beginning of 20th century.
    Now, why the "Ghan"? The original name was "The Afghan Express" and one of the stories says that when British colonizers failed to reach Australia's extremely hot interior, they hired Afghan camel drivers to complete the task. They build the rail tracks and afterwards let the camels go free (it might as well be that camels somehow escaped), hence nowadays Australia has a big population of wild camels.
    The alternative story says that "The Ghan" was rather a mocking name given by the Europeans to indicate questionable reliability of the train service.
    Either way, it has something to do with Afghanistan and funny enough not many people in here know about the story (personally I haven't met anyone yet). So the greatest was my surprise when I saw the painting on one of Kabul's infamous defense walls.
    So it's not an unknown story. It's a story to be spread as yet another positive feature of this mysterious and undiscovered country.