To understand India you have to see it hear it breathe it & feel it. Living through the good the bad & the ugly is the only way to know where you fit in & where India fits into you. In 1991 Monisha & her family uprooted from Sheffield to Madras in the hope of making India their home again. But fed up with soap-eating rats severed human heads paying bribes & the creepy colonel across the road they soon returned to England determined never to go back again. But twenty years later Monisha takes a page out of Jules Verne's classic tale turns to a map of the Indian railways & embarks on an adventure around India in 80 trains connecting 80 cities covering 40 000km
- the circumference of the Earth. The Indian railways carry over twenty million passengers every day ploughing through cities crawling past villages climbing up mountains & skimming along coasts. India Version 2.0 is now up & running & Monisha hopes that 80 train journeys up down & across India (including the world's second longest train journey) will lift the veil on a country that has become a stranger. As one of the largest civilian employers in the world featuring luxury trains toy trains Mumbai's infamous commuter trains & even a hospital on wheels Monisha discovers that the railways have more than a few stories to tell not to mention an amazing cast of characters. & with a self-confessed 'militant devout atheist' in tow her personal journey around a country built on religion isn't quite what she bargained for -