This article, “Adventurous Train Journeys” captured my imagination as a definite Bucket List. I have divided it into several blogs so as not to take up too much space in one. It just spreads out the imagined experience!!
There’s nothing quite like hopping on a train and watching the world go by. Train travel is more popular than ever with intrepid travelers in 2025, not only as a more sustainable alternative to flying, but as a way to gain a deeper experience with the destination. The journey itself becomes the focus – and the ultimate adventure.
“You don’t know who will sit beside you, what regional food you’ll find on board, which villages and towns will flit past the window,” says Monisha Rajesh, a train travel expert and author of Moonlight Express: Around the World By Night Train and Around the World in 80 Trains. “So much happens between the walls of a carriage, while at the same time the world continues to turn outside, giving you a unique understanding of the shape of the land, its bends and twists, the way mountains rise and recede, how deserts expand and close in. And all of this before you even reach your destination.”
Rajesh, and other travel writers, were asked for their most adventurous train journeys around the world. From the Arctic Circle train from Sweden to Norway, to ones closer to home, such as the Empire Builder that passes through Glacier National Park (where you could be lucky to spot a grizzly from your seat), these train journeys were chosen for their proximity to outdoor adventures, and incredible landscapes they pass through.
Hop aboard. Here are our picks for the most thrilling train adventures around the world in 2025.
QINGHAI-TIBET RAILWAY, TIBET
Tanggula Station, located at an altitude of approximately 5,068 meters, is the world’s highest railway station. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which includes Tanggula Station, is the world’s highest railway, connecting Xining and Lhasa.
The Route: Xining, China to Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous RegionDuration: 1215 miles, 21.5 hours
The Fare: 107 USD in a soft-sleeper compartment, one-way
The Adventure: The train from Xining to Lhasa is the highest rail journey in the world
Few sights can take my breath away, but at almost 5,000 metres (16,404 feet) above sea level, I was struggling, a headache squeezing at my temples. Gold nozzles pumped purified oxygen into the compartment and I inhaled in awed silence, licking my chapped lips. Before me, the Qinghai-Tibet plateau resembled a live Rothko painting: a slab of blazing yellow terrain rising to meet electric-blue sky, not a wisp of cloud in sight. Dreadlocked yaks were dotted around the foreground and the odd cluster of nomad tents swept by colorful prayer flags fluttering in the wind. What looked like an ocean flashed up towards the glass, tiny green waves on an expanse of bleeding hues, and then it was gone. Lakes gleamed like molten metal in the dryness and on the horizon a faint squiggle of suede-soft mountains.
Opened in 2006, the train from Xining to Lhasa is the highest rail journey in the world. Passing through earthquake zones, the line peaks at 5,072m above sea level at the Tanggula pass and contains more than 300 miles of elevated track built on permafrost that could melt at the slightest increase in temperature. Considered an engineering feat of excellence, the line requires liquid nitrogen to be circulated below the rail bed to keep it frozen throughout the year.
Overnight we had passed the Qinghai Lake and I was disappointed to have missed it in the darkness, but we were now barrelling into the Kunlun Mountains, their jagged bodies closing in, throwing an icy blue glow into the carriage. I had never seen earth’s natural beauty in so many forms and in such close proximity. Having travelled on more than 200 trains around the world, it was the most scenic ride of my life. On the descent into Lhasa Chinese flags flapped in the wind, Buick garages glided past the window and we drew into a station as vast as an airport hangar, armed guards greeting us at the exit, a reminder of Tibet’s ongoing struggle.
Once in Lhasa, try the four-day tour from Lhasa to Everest Base Camp which includes stops at Yamdroktso Lake, and both the Pelkor and Tashilhunpo monasteries. Top tip: ask for Kungga Dundruk to be your Tibetan guide for the tour. – Monisha Rajesh
EXPRESO DEL SUR, BOLIVIA
The Route: Oruro-Villazón
Duration: 373 miles, 19 hours
The Fare: USD$18.50
The Adventure: Salar de Uyuni; Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa; Cordillera de Chichas
After departing the tin mining city of Oruro in western Bolivia, the Expreso del Sur bore south through one of the world’s most dramatic, and least hospitable, landscapes. Gazing out of the carriage window, I watched the urban sprawl gradually dissolve into the altiplano, a vast plateau stretched taut between two branches of the Andes at an average altitude of more than 12,000ft.
Sparsely populated, bitterly cold, largely treeless and starved of rain, it was a stark yet beautiful landscape, particularly when we skirted the shoreline of the otherworldly Salar de Uyuni, the world’s biggest salt flat. Built in the late 19 th century to transport the altiplano’s abundant metals and minerals, the railway line once ran from Bolivia’s de facto capital La Paz to the Pacific port of Antofagasta in Chile. The boom has long passed and the route is now plied by the Ferrobús, which vaguely resembles a coach on rails and follows a truncated route between Oruro and the town of Villazón on the Argentine border. En route it calls in at the remote, windswept tourist hub of Uyuni and the quieter but similarly isolated town of Tupiza.
Most travellers disembark at the former and take guided jeep tours across the salar, a pancake-flat, blindingly white expanse the size of Jamaica ringed with chalk-smudge peaks and dotted with islands studded with giant cacti. These trips generally take in the neighbouring Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, a realm of smouldering volcanoes, high-pressure geysers and mineral-stained lakes sprinkled with flamingos, as as well as the Cementerio de Trenes (Train Cemetery). The latter, on the outskirts of Uyuni, is an evocative collection of abandoned steam locomotives, wagons and carriages from the railway’s heyday slowly disintegrating in the harsh climatic conditions of the altiplano.- Shafik Meghji
DURANGO AND SILVERTON NARROW GAUGE RAILROAD, COLORADO
The Route: Durango, Colorado to Silverton, Colorado
Duration: 45 miles, 3.5 hours each way; 9 hours roundtrip with two-hour stop at terminus town
The Fare: $109 – $335 depending on class; season passes for $170-320
The Adventure: Travel back in time on this historic train through the Rocky Mountain wilderness
Listening to the shriek of the steam whistle as it echoes eerily through the Animas River Canyon, I have no trouble believing that the first passengers to ride the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad when it was completed in 1882 gazed out at the jagged peaks and crashing rapids with the same awe I feel 137 years later.
It’s possible to do this round trip from either origin point; I’ve chosen to depart from Durango and overnight in Silverton, though many choose to take this ride as a nine -hour day trip with a two hour stop in the terminus town.
My reason for overnighting in Silverton was to challenge myself with one of this rugged silver mining hamlet’s many high-altitude hikes, among them the lung-challenging six-mile round-trip to Highland Mary Lakes, which gains more than 1500 feet in altitude before arriving at the granite-scooped lake, surrounded by tundra at 12,300 feet. Equally rugged adventure possibilities come via adventure packages offered by local outfitters that put you straight on the river or skimming over the canopy with no need for additional planning.
Try your mettle on the course of 27 ziplines – the most in the world – at Soaring Tree Top Adventures, an adventure center midway on the ride reachable only by train or plane. You can also include a wild and crazy jeep ride on the rugged Silverton Skyway or a two-hour guided rafting trip with Mountain Rafting with a round-trip ride.
There’s one more possible thrill to be had on your ride: a rare spotting of Bigfoot, more commonly known locally as Sasquatch, who’s been sighted – or allegedly sighted, depending on your belief status – in the Silverton and Durango areas. More importantly, the most recent of these sightings, just two years ago, was by a railroad passenger, so keep a lookout for a tall, hairy figure, or for massive footprints, which are also commonly reported, and listen for the mysterious creature’s spine-tingling howls. – Melanie Haiken.
