SPENDING four days on a crowded, grubby train as it trundles over 4,200 kilometres, past 615 stations, and through eight states in India, is a lesson in endurance. Splash out 2,500 rupees (around $50) and you may board the newly inaugurated Vivek Express, the world's eighth-longest train ride. A weekly service, for the first time it connects directly, by rail, the far north-east of the subcontinent—the seven poor and neglected states stuck on the wrong side of Bangladesh—through “mainland” India and down to its southernmost tip, at Kanyakumari.

The air is cold and foggy in Dibrugarh, a scruffy town in a remote corner of Assam known for tea-gardens and natural beauty. Earlier, when the sun was out, snow-capped mountains, foothills to the Himalayas, were visible to the north. There, in Arunachal Pradesh, lies the disputed border with China. Only a short distance to the south lies the frontier with Myanmar. Now, just before midnight, as your correspondent climbs aboard, a winter chill hangs over the station.

No whistle marks our (on-time) departure, but a polite female voice from the tannoy system advises against riding on the roof, as it is “very dangerous”. So we begin to plod through the night, mostly parallel to the massive Brahmaputra river. We cut briefly into Nagaland, a state forgotten by the brash claims of those who celebrate a “rising India”. It is still known for its insurgents, who are in turn spurred on by persistent poverty: the average Nagalander's annual income last year was just 22,400 rupees ($450), a paltry sum compared with 62,500 rupees per person earned in Tamil Nadu, at the pointy end of India.

The mornings, indeed all the waking hours, are punctuated by regular cries of “chai, chai”, as a man lugging a silver urn offers tiny cups of sweet, brown and milky tea at 5 rupees each. He is followed by water-sellers (“pani, pani”), the junk-food wallah (“chips, chips”) and—depending on the nearest station—sellers of samosas, biryanis, newspapers, paperback novels, SIM cards, memory sticks and a great deal more. In turn come beggars (an elderly man with stumps instead of hands, a boy with one leg) and occasional hijras (transgenders) in search of a few rupees.

A telling detail is the beep of mobile phones. Not only does everyone appear to have one, the coverage along the entire journey is unbroken. For a Briton used to wretched phone reception on a densely populated small island, the triumph of Indian telecoms is self-evident.

Fellow passengers, of course, offer the most. A companion in your correspondent's cabin, who boarded in Dibrugarh, rides all the way south to Kerala. He calls himself Mr Kamil, tells stories of being a trader in coconuts and “small things”, and of roaming the country for work over the past 27 years. After so long on the rails, he says he has learned much about his homeland. Such as? “India”, he leans over to reveal, “is very, very big”.

Those who take India's long-distance trains are a particular type. Mostly they are educated and rich enough to need to travel long distances—some to study, others to trade or find work—they yet cannot afford the cost of flying. Many are connected to government. Geeta Mohan (pictured, seated left), a teacher from Kerala, is delighted to ride a direct train home from her school, which is thousands of kilometres away in Bhutan. She has taught for there for 31 years.

Two friends, Bhutanese civil servants (pictured, beside Ms Mohan), are trundling south to Chennai to complete a year of studying computer use. Sitting with them, as we creep into Andhra Pradesh, on India's east coast, is T.K. Shaju, a soldier in the Assamese Rifles for the past 15 years and a veteran of insurgencies in the remote north-east. His home, too, is in Kerala, and he calculates he has spent a year of his life on the train, losing several days at a time when he crosses India to get home to his family.

Stroll up and down the train and a wider variety of characters appear. In the second-class carriages there are many labourers: Indian's railways help shift workers from the relatively young and poor north to the fast-aging and richer south. A tea-picker in Assam might earn a measly 40 rupees a day (less than $1), plus some food and lodging. If he rides south to Kerala, he may toil for five times as much. Others are moving to study: the south has colleges of hotel management, for instance, which is helpful for a booming tourism sector.

Most damning may be the fact that many choose to cross India to find a decent hospital. As we reach Vellore in Tamil Nadu, for example, various patients and their relatives disembark. One woman from Guwahati helps her mother, with a brain tumour, who has come to seek decent care unavailable in the north.

And as we enter the last leg of the journey, moving to Kerala and the western coast of India, I spend my time talking to the men who run the train. Pentan Kshetru, the manager of the moving kitchen (pictured at right), is proud of his work. Young and from Manipur, one of the neglected “seven sister” states in the north-east, he dares to hope that the Vivek Express now binds his state more closely to the rest of the country. “Yes, 100%, it is connecting India and everybody is proud” he claims, somewhat unconvincingly. Another man, the novelist, who is planning an Indian sequel to a Dickens' work (“Greater Expectations. Do you see?”), talks of the train as a “metaphor for uniting India”. And he admits, frankly, problems to be overcome: “you know we didn't always think of the north-east being in India.”

Not all is unity and better understanding. A Tamil ticket inspector is scathing in regard to his various compatriots, especially northerners. He rails against the filthy habits of some passengers, who scatter rubbish, lift their children to urinate in sinks or relieve themselves from open doors while the train is stopped in stations. He dismisses a suggestion that all they need is better education. He prefers to write off the entire culture of the northern “Hindu cow belt” as ignorant or backward.

At last, to the delight of the hard core of passengers who have been aboard for four days, the train clatters by the backwaters of Kerala, within sight of the Indian ocean, then into Kanyakumari itself. A tourist spot, crammed with visitors eager to see the subcontinent's southern tip, it is also a chance to inhale ozone-rich sea air and walk on the beach. For the black-clad pilgrims marching through the station, and others, the final draw is an extra half-kilometre away. A rock in the sea, dedicated to a Bengali aristocrat who helped to spread Indian philosophies, and yoga, to the West and raised awareness of Hinduism on the international stage. Known as Swami Vivekananda, the train service is named for him.



