Take a Ride on One of India's Legendary Mountain Railways | National Geographic

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] The rugged mountainous terrain of India contains unmatched adventure. Their three historic railways are grouped into a single World Heritage site known as the Mountain Railways of India. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, and the Kalka Shimla Railway are a Holy Trinity for train aficionados. But they're more than just relics of British colonization; all three are still fully operational today, and a ride on any of them reveals the incredible engineering that connected these rugged locales.

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, often called the toy train because of its diminutive size, opened in 1881. The serpentine track gained serious altitude by employing an endless series of switchbacks, hairpin turns, and bridges. The Nilgiri Mountain Railway spans 29 miles of mountainous terrain in Tamil Nadu state. This steam-driven line climbs through southern jungles, rising towards its terminus at Ooty, Mandalam.

The Kalka-Shimla Railway line climbs close to a mile high, taking passengers through 102 tunnels and across 864 bridges. If the journey is as important as the destination, then the Mountain Railways of India are an essential travel experience. There are intriguing stops along each of these lines, leaving it up to the traveler to decide how long to linger along this iconic route. [Music]

People Don't See It - Anthony Hopkins On The Illusion Of Life

New Technologies: Making Wildlife Cinematography More Accessible | National Geographic

View All

The Biggest Ideas in Philosophy

In the city of Cyprus in 300 BC, there lived a very wealthy traitor called Zeno. While on a voyage from Phenicia to Perez, his boat sank along with all of his cargo. Because of that single event, an event that was entirely out of Xeno’s or anyone’s contro…

Prince Rupert's Drop EXPLODING in Epoxy Resin at 456,522 fps - Smarter Every Day 273

Hey, it’s me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. We are here at Lookout Mountain, Alabama again at Orbit shot glass. I made a video years ago called “The Mystery of the Prince Rupert’s Drop” about this peculiar little piece of glass where it’s rea…

How I Made My First Million Dollars Part 1 | Ask Mr. Wonderful Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary

I have an email here for this week’s episode of Ask Mr. Wonderful. Uh, rather interesting, I think it’s going to take us on quite a journey from Yasmina. “Yesmina, hi Mr. Wonderful. I’m a huge Shark Tank fan. I’ve been watching the show for eight years. …

Introducing a New Cheetah! – Day 81 | Safari Live

Interim! Let’s send you all the way on down-south, 1,600 miles to Scott. Hello everyone! You may have just seen a bird fly through the thick undergrowth there. We were hoping it would stick around. So, it’s calling it “say orange-breasted bush shrike,” a…

Worked example: analyzing an ocean food web | Middle school biology | Khan Academy

So this diagram right over here describes a food web, and a food web models how energy and matter move in an ecosystem. We’re going to use this food web to answer some questions to make sure we understand food webs. So the first thing I’m going to ask yo…

How to Flush $5,000,000,000 Down the Drain - A Netflix Original Documentary

[Music] So Netflix reported their Q1 2021 earnings on Tuesday, Tuesday, April 20th. Overall, their results weren’t too bad. Of course, we know Netflix makes money through selling subscriptions to their streaming service. Overall, their revenue was up, gre…

Take a Ride on One of India's Legendary Mountain Railways | National Geographic

More Articles