15,000 miles. 60 days. 30 trains. 20 countries. And one unbroken escapade of escape. Each train was a blind date—with brutish bounty hunters, comely opera singers, human traffickers, grifters posing as police (their molls batting eyelashes on the platform), wide-eyed prisoners chained to my top bunk, and surreptitious lovers casting moving shadows, their sounds masked by the primal rumble of the beast train in the middle of the night. You never knew what you were going to get; between the danger and the odd characters were quiet stretches of solitude and unexpected moments of connection.