Thirty-three years after The Great Railway Bazaar, the classic account of his four-month journey across Europe, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Siberia, Thoreau revisits the route in his new book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. But why did he go in search of an old trail? “Old people have this spectral aura and one feels the same when one is revisiting a place. Of ghosts going back in time. The travel writer’s conceit is that he travels to a place only once and makes an assumption about it, which has a lasting impression on the reader,” says the 66-year-old

Theroux admits that he has made numerous assumptions and generalisations about India in the past, but explains that he was mostly seeking clarifications through his writings. “All writers feel the need to impose a certain order in the world,” he says. In the same breath, he says that if he weren’t a writer, he’d be creating software in America.