Monisha Rajesh

Rajesh was born in Norfolk, England, the child of two Indian doctors.[1] The family moved from Sheffield to Madras, India, in 1991. After two years, "fed up with soap eating [sic] rats, stolen human hearts and [the] creepy colonel across the road, we returned to England with a bitter taste in our mouths",[2] and she made only occasional visits to India over the next twenty years: "little more than the occasional family wedding had succeeded in tempting me back".[3]^: xiii She attended King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham, the University of Leeds, and has a postgraduate diploma in magazine journalism from the Department of Journalism, City University.[4]

Rajesh has worked for The Week and written for The Guardian, The Times, The New York Times and Time.[5]

In 2010, she embarked on a four-month journey around India by train, using 80 train journeys to reach the furthest points of the Indian rail network, described in her 2012 book Around India in 80 trains.[6][2][7]

She subsequently travelled around the world in another 80 train journeys, writing Around the World in 80 Trains (2019),[8][1] which The Independent listed in 2020 as one of "10 best travel books to satisfy your wanderlust in lockdown".[9]

In mid-2021 she, with Sunny Singh and Chimene Suleyman, received racist abuse on social media as a result of raising concerns about depictions of autism and of students of colour in Kate Clanchy's book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me,[10] with Rajesh characterising some of Clanchy's prose as "dehumanising", "racist", "anti-Black", "antisemitic" and "more like something a eugenicist might observe than a trusted teacher".[11] The discussion prompted a reaction, including from authors such as Philip Pullman and Amanda Craig,[10] that Rajesh characterised as racist, writing in The Guardian that "a sinister realisation dawned as they closed ranks and appeared to reply to white critics only",[11] with "a group of white women authors pointedly demean[ing]" the women of colour "as 'activists' who were 'attacking' Clanchy".[11] Rajesh also wrote that the 3 women of colour were "under a coordinated racist attack from the 'alt-right' which targeted our emails and social media".[11]

Rajesh won the 2020 National Consumer Feature of the Year award of the Travel Media Awards for a piece in The Guardian about the Trans-Siberian Railway.[12]

She was one of the judges for the 2021 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year ,[13] after her Around the World in 80 Trains was shortlisted for the 2020 award.[14]

• Rajesh, Monisha (2012). Around India in 80 Trains. Nicholas Brealey. ISBN 978-1-85788-595-8.
• Rajesh, Monisha (2019). Around the World in 80 Trains. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1408869758.
• Rajesh, Monisha (2022). Epic Train Journeys. Gestalten. ISBN 978-3967040203.

• Around the world in 80 trains website