Author Theroux revisits world aboard 'Ghost Train'

By Gary Crosse

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After a life spent on the road and on the rails, U.S. novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux decided to take the world's temperature once again.

In his latest book, "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star," Theroux retraces his steps from an earlier journey across the world that became his 1975 best-seller "The Great Railway Bazaar."

"It's not exactly memory lane, it's not remembering something," Theroux said "It's the literature of revisiting."

Traveling mostly by overnight train, he chronicles his journey through 18 countries including Georgia, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Burma and Cambodia.

"I just thought I'm going to take that trip again and see what it's like, to see how the places have changed," he said. "And of course nothing stays the same."

The nomadic author is stunned but heartened by the transformation of Vietnam since his visit there in the 1970s, in the midst of war. But Burma, which has since renamed itself Myanmar, strikes him as stagnating in its isolation.

Other places, such as Turkmenistan, were unlike any of the more than 100 countries he has visited and written about.

"Turkmenistan, that was a gift. To go to a place run by a complete lunatic, but a lunatic multibillionaire, is a gift as a traveler," he said, referring to the late president-for-life, Saparmurat Niyazov, known as "Turkmenbashi."