Sometimes you don’t need to look far to find an interesting speaker.

On Wednesday April 29 our very own Chris Warby described his “visit to a war zone” to his fellow club members.

Chris related the tale of his “holiday” in India in 2025, with his wife, when they expected to make six rail journeys and visit places they had not visited on two previous holidays there back in 1999 and 2002.

Unfortunately, a war between India and Pakistan was just starting.  So, halfway through their tour, their tour party had to be evacuated back to Delhi from the Attari–Wagah border area when fighting broke out there.  There were missiles, drones, aerial dogfights, tank convoys, blackouts, etc as the area was put on Red Alert!

The Wagar Border Crossing, the primary land crossing between the two nations and famous for its elaborate flag-lowering ceremony, which they were about to visit, was closed (and remains closed).

In addition, four of the planned rail trips did not run.  Apparently, as they were told, “the trains are very unhygienic and unreliable”!  And they were also unable to visit some of the places on the planned tour.  So, the intended Great Indian Rail Journey was a trip to remember– but not for the right reasons!

Nevertheless, Chris and his wife still visited many famous sights, albeit mainly ones they had visited before.

These included

  • Delhi;
  • Jaipur with its impressive Gateway and the iconic Palace of the Winds (designed to allow royal women to observe city life while remaining hidden), plus the nearby Amber Fort (sometimes called the Red Fort) and the extraordinary Jantar Mantar observatory;
  • the Taj Mahal and the Baby Taj at Agra,
  • Ranthambore National Park, famous for its tigers (other wildlife seen included spotted deer, both crocodile and alligator, macaques, and a variety of bird species such as little egret, black drongo and painted stork);
  • Amritsar, the centre of Sikhism, and its spectacular Golden Temple; and after they were evacuated back to Delhi,
  • the Jama Masjid Mosque.

Chris took many wonderfully evocative pictures of these marvellous sights as well as of the locals (some riding hugely overloaded motorbikes) and tourists (all Indians seemed very keen to be photographed), and the colourfully decorated trucks, lorries, and buses on the roads.

His informative narrative was therefore richly illustrated with a large selection of these images.

Subsequently, the members of the tour party all managed to get some money back from the tour company!