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On a bamboo train

VERSATILE: Innovatively used in Cambodia. PHOTO: C.V. SUBRAHMANYAM

Travellers in Cambodia have to deal with one of the world's worst train networks. There is only one passenger service a week, and it often travels at not much more than walking pace. So people in the north west of the country, near Cambodia's second city of Battambang, have taken matters into their own hands. They have created their own rail service using little more than pieces of bamboo. The locals call the vehicles "noris", or "lorries", but overseas visitors know them as "bamboo trains". A tiny electric generator engine provides the power, and the passenger accommodation is a bamboo platform that rests on top of two sets of wheels. A dried-grass mat to sit on counts as a luxury. It would be a white-knuckle ride — if there were actually anything to hold on to.

COMPLIED BY ROHINI RAMAKRISHNAN

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