Anyone can receive a blessing from the temple elephant, Lakshmi. (After you give her a 100-rupee note, she whacks you gratefully on the head.) But train passengers have a special advantage: You go back at night to Hampi's central Vittala Temple complex, a compound of intricately sculpted halls with rows of pillars and the central stone chariot that gives the train its name.

FORBES: Photograph: Andre Fanthome (RAAS)

Li Peng Chao, one of three founders of MarketYiWu.com, held up a sign with my name at the Yiwu train station on a humid and drizzly Saturday morning.

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For me it was a brief train stop on the main line between Glasgow and London or a name on a signpost as you passed it on the A74 dual carriageway south towards the border.

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