For Russian traveller and digital creator Alena Makush, travelling through India has become much more than a holiday. Since arriving in the country on July 12 after spending time in Bali, Alena has been documenting her experiences on Instagram and sharing the things that surprise, confuse, and delight her along the way. Her latest adventure, a journey on an Indian Railways Third AC coach, has caught the attention of social media users, not simply because of her reaction to the train, but because of how dramatically her view of India appears to have changed.
From surprise at the coach to enjoying the journey
Alena’s 46-second video begins at a railway station, where she arrives with a friend before boarding the train. Once inside the 3AC coach, one of the first things she notices is the washroom. She appears surprised by its design before checking herself in the mirror and making her way towards her berth. But it is the relative lack of crowds that seems to impress her most. Looking around the coach, she reacts with a surprised “Wow” and observes that everything seems fine as long as there is no crowd. Her reaction offers a glimpse into how differently an everyday Indian train journey can look to someone experiencing it for the first time.In another video, Alena is seen eating during the train ride and looking outside the window as the landscape passes by. Rather than focusing only on what was unfamiliar, she found herself enjoying the simple experience. She praised the food and the scenery, even joking about the smell of eggs that had spread through the coach. For her, those small details became part of the charm of the journey. The train ride reminded her of the simple happiness associated with travelling by train as a child.
Why India changed her first impression
The train journey is only one part of Alena’s larger experience in India. Her earlier posts suggest that her first few days in the country were not easy. Coming to India after Bali, she found the atmosphere very different from the calm environment she had been used to. She described India as a place where opposites seem to exist together, poverty and wealth, noise and silence, chaos and peace. Initially, those contrasts caught her attention and made the country difficult to understand.But as she travelled and spent more time experiencing everyday life, her reaction began to change. In a post shared on July 17, Alena wrote that she was beginning to realise that India did not scare her anymore. Instead, she felt that the country was teaching her. She spoke about developing a renewed sense of gratitude for things that can easily be taken for granted, including clean water, a comfortable bed and the simple ability to walk, breathe and live. That may be the most interesting part of her India journey. She did not describe the country as perfect, nor did she pretend that the initial culture shock disappeared. Instead, her posts show a gradual shift from observing India’s contrasts to understanding what those contrasts were teaching her.
A train ride that became part of a bigger journey
Alena’s 3AC experience has gone viral because it is instantly relatable to Indian viewers. Her reactions to the washroom, the relatively quiet coach, the food, the eggs, and the scenery are all ordinary details of train travel for many Indians. Seen through the eyes of a first-time foreign traveller, however, those same details become something worth noticing. Her experience also shows why travel stories can be about much more than destinations. Sometimes, the most memorable part of a journey is not a famous monument or luxury hotel but a simple train ride, a meal shared with a friend or a view outside a window.For Alena, India appears to be becoming exactly that kind of journey. She has said that the country is influencing not only her travel plans but also her outlook on life, and that she has already begun falling in love with it. What started with uncertainty has slowly turned into curiosity, gratitude and affection. And perhaps that is why her train video has connected with so many people: she came to India expecting to discover a country, but somewhere along the way, she seems to have discovered a different way of looking at life.