Quiet, Serendipitous Finds

The overcast sky, the wild wind and the long road seemed akin to a visual metaphor of the storm that had raged inside my mind since few days. It was nine in the morning and I was in IIT Guwahati, driving past a middle-aged woman, with dark and sturdy calves smeared in mud, bent over a bed of frail-looking yellow flowers that lined the campus road, plucking weeds and dropping them into the bamboo basket strapped on her back. Leaving behind a large, tree-lined pond and the morning rush of students cycling to their classes, I was soon out of the IIT campus.

My jethai (my mother’s elder sister) had accompanied me, but we drove in a secretly grateful companionable silence. The road was empty apart from a herd of goats that sat authoritatively right in the middle of it. I rolled down the windows to let the cold wind beat against my face and course their way throw my curls. Just as I was about to turn left on the Amingaon road, a huge Buddha statue with yellow robes and indigo hair caught my eye. It was set atop a hill a few hundred yards away on the opposite side. Why hadn’t I ever noticed it earlier despite taking this road umpteen times?

On an impulse, I turned right and towards the immense statue of Buddha that sat here in the middle of nowhere, so far away from the city. I stopped near three tiny temples which I had misjudged as the path uphill to the statue. We got out of the car anyway at the insistence of the priest who had come out on seeing us. I was hesitant as the only thing religious about me is that I religiously avoided any place of worship thronging with crowds and commercialized rituals.  But here we were the only visitors (don’t want to use the word devotees).

The priest told us that this was the Jaiguru Ganesh Mandir. My jethai was more pious than me and did the rounds of the Ganesha temple (where the idol was carved into the slope of hill that formed one of the temple walls), the Shiva temple and the Lakshmi temple.

I just stood there soaking in the quietness and serenity and watched the tiny shed next to a tree with red blossoms, a lone dove perched up on the dome of the Lakshmi temple and large boulders and trees that surrounded the temple. The priest wasn’t judgmental or inquisitive of my avoidance of worship, and came forward smilingly to hand me a sacred flower. I smiled back in acceptance. He directed us the way to the Buddha statue which we were told was located in the Assam Buddha Vihar.

Barely a hundred meters away, we drove uphill into a narrow path. On seeing two old cars covered with dust and grime and half-hidden in the bushes, I wondered if they were abandoned by their owners who couldn’t find any way to reverse and drive down the narrow curves of the path we were on. Chuckling at that possibility of my own car, I parked it and walked up the stone steps into what I assumed was a Buddhist monastery.

In her late sixties now, my jethaiwasn’t keen on climbing too many stairs. We reached the verandah of what I still assumed to be a monastery and hence was on the lookout for meditating monks when a woman dressed in a baggy yellow kurta welcomed us with a cheery ‘namaste, please come in’. She dragged out a plastic chair for my jethai to sit in, and showed me the path further uphill to the ‘Bada wala Buddha, Big Buddha’. I walked on alone just as I heard the woman tell my jethai “I thought I was a tall woman, but you are even taller than me“. The trail was relatively short and populated with bushes, boulders and red beetles.

The giant torso of the Buddha loomed into view soon enough. Even though it wasn’t as large as the one I had seen in the Tawang monastery, it still cast an imposing figure. There was a view-point that looked out into lush paddy fields, groves of coconut trees swaying in the brisk wind and the distant river. A pale sun shone through the clouds. If I had drove up alone and if I had a book with me, I would have stayed there the entire day.

Half an hour later, I was back with my jethai and the woman with the pleasant face who introduced herself as C. S. Lama. She insisted that we visit her private prayer hall and took us into her home, which I had mistook for a monastery. We walked into a narrow lobby and up some steep stairs to a room with a shabby wooden door. But the lock had got stuck and as her house-help was out on leave for Bihu, we couldn’t enter the prayer hall.

Instead she showed us the mud-filled wooden pot filled with numerous half-burnt incense sticks stuck on it and a wok containing a paste of flour, milk and honey. Every evening Mrs. Lama prayed for peace and poured a spoonful of the milk and flour mixture into the incense-stick pot in a gesture of offering it as ‘bhog’ to the departed souls of loved ones. She then showed us the two Stupas that stood on a tiny hillock adjacent to the verandah.

She guided us through the delightful maze that was her cozy home. The bedroom was littered with old photographs and magazines on the floor; a television was tuned to IPL match highlights; and a stationary exercise bike stood against the large floor to ceiling windows. The view from the bedroom and the adjacent balcony was breathtaking and I could almost touch the blossoms of the gulmohar tree. Mrs. Lama told us how on some nights leopards and deers climbed out of the forests and roamed outside her window. Just hearing about it made me want to camp out there till the next sighting. 

She showed us the photographs of her grandchild and nostalgically said, He is seven and often I forget the passage of years and mistake him for my son at that age. They look identical. She took us to an old stove and the pile of firewood lined next to it. Those of us from the hills like our food with the distinct flavor that comes from cooking on firewood.

Mrs. Lama insisted that we stay for coffee as we had visited on the occasion of Bihu and ushered us into the dinning hall bathed in a warm orange light. As she took the lids off tiny red cups with painted yellow dragons and poured in the coffee powder (ironically stored in a Bournvita container), she started narrating the story of her life. She had constructed the entire Assam Buddha Vihar on her own as a tribute to her husband. Just like Shahjahan built Taj Mahal in the memory of Mumtaz, she chuckled.  She was assigned the land by the government in the outskirts (as was her preference to be away from the city) in 1984 and whenever sufficient funds were accumulated the construction progressed step by step, and was completed in 1989. It would be completing its twenty-fifth foundation day next year.

She had come to Assam as a young bride from Bhutan, accompanying her husband and used to be the unofficial and preferred translator in all his business transactions here. They ran a flourishing real estate and transport business. Despite having homes in several places in India and Bhutan, she decided to settle down in Assam when she had made up her mind to construct the Buddha Vihar. I used to have a horrible temper and portrayed a tough exterior in the early days, but I had to do so to prevent people from duping me or taking advantage of the fact that my husband was no more, she said matter-of-factly. She proudly stated that her son had graduated from St.Stephen College and now lived in Delhi with his wife and son.  Mrs. Lama’s daughter is married to a Bhutanese national and her grand-daughter had just passed her senior year of school. She broke into giggles talking about the events leading up to her son’s marriage that involved some parental resistance and a short ‘living in sin’ (as the term goes in conservative societies) period. I am a broad-minded, modern woman. I understand these things, she said and I couldn’t help feeling a rush of endearment for her.

Now she lives alone in the home she had built for her atop this secluded hill, adjacent to the giant Buddha statue. Downstairs there is a communal prayer hall, where we prayed before a bronze statue of Buddha set atop an artistically set altar. There are plush low settees, gongs, prayer wheels, portraits of leaders she admired, and hand-drawn paintings depicting the teachings of Buddha. She showed me a painting about the fate in after-life and rebirths if we conduct misdeeds in the present life. See, if you needlessly cut down a healthy tree, you will be reborn as a tree too and get mercilessly chopped down. Agar galat kaam karega, toh aadmi agle janam mein khamba ban sakta hai (pointing to a man with a pillar for a torso). Finding her own words very funny, she burst into another set of giggles.

Mrs. Lama mentions that she has eight rooms in the adjacent guest house, that is used by visiting family members as well as occasional tourists. We cook our food together. Come and stay sometime. A new tourist lodge is coming up adjacent to the property and would soon be functional. Mrs. Lama’s warm hospitality, endearing and easy familiarity, delightful conversations, the serene ambience, the peaceful prayer hall, the majestic Buddha statue, the addictive quietude of being far away from the city, the surrounding lush forests and the blossoming Gulmohar; Assam Buddha Vihar is a must visit for the Guwahati residents and tourists alike. I look forward to visit this quaint little place again for the Buddha Jayanti celebrations next week (25th May).

I am just glad that a mundane morning drive brought up such quiet, serendipitous finds. The storm inside had abated.

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Weird Synapses

While driving on NH-37, most people notice the Sarusajai stadium, a popular dhaba, a few educational institutes or the Balaji temple. But when I go for a drive on the same route, my attention is grabbed by two unusual landmarks, a Tyrannosaurus-shaped tree atop a hill and a life-size model of a red car atop an ordinary house. On my weekly commute to the village where I used to work, few of the familiar landmarks I looked out for were as follows: a pumpkin shed, the toothless old lady who sat on her haunches every morning and picked the head lice of her grandchild, a row of birds on the electric wire, a smoky brick kiln, a muddy pool of lilies, and a police station outside which two men always played carom.

Most people I know are amateur cartographers, gauging distances, noting landmarks and flaunting an impeccable sense of direction. I can drive on the same road for a whole year and yet fail to remember what comes after what, the familiar bumps and bends, and the commonly accepted landmarks. My focus veers into the oddities instead; which after an adequate frequency of visual stimulation serve as good enough reminders to find my way around. But it is a hassle to tell anyone directions such as, “turn left after passing the restaurant that had written ‘dhoosa’ instead of ‘dosa’ on the outdoor menu” or “the lane next to the building that is the colour of vomit”, or even “take the right at the intersection near the statue with parabolic breasts”.

In larger cities with an abundance of one-way streets, I have to take lengthy detours to get anywhere, owing to my selective peripheral vision (once I had trouble recalling and telling a friend the colour of the building I stay in) and driving past my destinations. I require time to cram whole buildings, little nooks and corners, and the roads into my memory. But as I notice the weird stuff rather than the proper street names or house numbers, even GPS technology fails to salvage my paltry spatial awareness and navigate me in this immaculately labelled urban world.

My father claims it is a lack of focus, but I feel it is just an alternative focus; like being left-handed in a world swarming with right-handedness, or being colour-blind among people who sees a riot of colours. Now, colour-blindness is another story. On my first day of HS at Cotton College, I gloated about securing a seat on the first bench of the severely cramped chemistry gallery. The reason was to get a ringside view of the magic show (or the fun chemistry experiments) that is demonstrated on the first day of college by a very exuberant professor. While the magic tricks were going on, the professor turned to me and said, “Do you see that heap of powder on the table? Tell me what colour is it“. It was late afternoon ans we were in a minimally-lit room, and there was the additional pressure of nearly five hundred pairs of unfamiliar eyes that had suddenly turned towards me, awaiting my answer; so after a moment of observation  I replied, “It is dark green, Sir.” The professor shouted, “ARE YOU COLOUR BLIND? That’s grey.” And I shrunk in my seat.

Considering I have perfect vision, I wonder if my brain has weird synapses that perceives the world in a different way from the normal folk; and this feeling is reinforced by my habit of looking for signs where they are none. Dear reader, tell me I am not alone.

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Why (do I) Travel?

Have you ever seen the flight of a Hornbill framed in orange skies lit up by the dying rays of the sun?

Or woke up on a winter morning to the sight of powdery snowflakes chasing each other down the window pane?

Have you walked deep into a forest and looked up into an eerie green light filtering through a leafy canopy made of trees that resemble the lithe limbs of a ballerina?

Did you feel the goosebumps on every inch of your skin when you held your breath and plunged into the depths of the icy, blue water just as the sun was rising?

Have you gladly let the waves carry you into the sea after a long walk on the hot beach that almost burnt your naked feet?

Have you seen a young monk moonwalk on the cobbled steps of a monastery before being overcome with giggles?

Did you ever sit by the pond at a remote village and threw pebbles at one of the two large and luminous moons?

Have you ever let your hand be bathed in the light filtered through a lattice screen built centuries ago with red sandstone?

Have you stood atop an old embankment as a wild river licked your feet?

Did you ever witness hordes of marijuana-puffing, saffron-robed, malnourished sadhus with long, matted hair dancing around a phallic symbol?

Did you ever go gallivanting in an unfamiliar hill town and stumble upon a tree with blossoms as pink as the cheeks of toothless toddlers that played underneath it, and by a gurgling brook no less?

Did you ever chase the sun on a lonely highway and watch its melting orange hue suffuse the sky?

Have you ever gulped in lungfuls of air after getting down from the car at an impulse and racing your cousins down the entire stretch of the road leading to your ancestral home in the village?

Did you ever share a first kiss on the terrace of an old guesthouse overlooking the sea, as the evening air caressed your warm faces?

Have you ever hung motionless in the air letting yourself be softly blown around by the wind and a strap around your back?

Do you know the vertigo of looking down the long, winding roads you had drove so far?

Have you ever sat cross-legged and drank tea in a tree-house?

Have you ever hidden inside a stack of warm, golden and somewhat itchy hay?

Did you ever light a fire from scratch?

Have you ever turned a corner and found an old bookstore and decided to dump planned itinerary to browse out-of-print titles for the rest of the day?

Have you ever pushed a stew of unidentifiable objects down your gullet just because the host was a smiling old lady in her nineties, and because you were just so hungry?

Did you ever buy a dozen amulets because the old man who sold them had such pious, believable eyes?

Have you ever dusted off frost from your hair as you watched huge sheets of icy rain engulf a valley?

Did you ever secretly believed that there was really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and walked around a bent in the hill road to check?

Have you ever been on a boat, as curved as a bow, in a lake filled with lilies?

Did you ever eat fruit right from the tree?

Have you ever laid down in a large green ground, with tiny white and yellow flowers, and identified faces in clouds?

Did you chat with a co-passenger on a long, train journey and he/she’s now one of your closest friends?

Do you have a restless soul and impatient feet?

Do you need any more reasons?

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Whisper of the Heart OR In which I yearn for a home in the hills

“On a perfect day in a perfect world, I would wake up to the sun peeking in to tiger-stripe my nest of white sheets and a pillow as soft and plump as a baby’s cheeks. And I would run up the stairs barefoot, to the terrace and be surrounded by a sea of trees interspersed with pretty houses, a riot of colors blooming on their front porches and an occasional rocking chair.

  

I would sip a steaming cup of coffee with only the birds on a red roof for company. And then be tempted by a long winding road disappearing around the corner in a pink bougainvillea bush.

 

The early hour will contrive to keep the people of the pretty houses under downy quilts in their warm beds while I would tie my shoelaces and quietly slip out of the house. I’ll meet a few children though, with cheeks as red as apples; and going downhill I’ll cross a girl, waiting and drumming impatient fingers on her satchel, and a minute later walk past a boy hurrying uphill, smiling to himself. I’ll run my fingers along ivy-lined stone walls and stand under a tree with the prettiest pink blossoms. 

 

After an hour of meandering I will realize that I’m lost in this Ghibli-esque world of green hedges and winding roads and a narrow stairway will be the rescue; old steps would bypass the curves of the hill, and lead me through a tiny garden onto a familiar road.

 

A hearty breakfast later, I would walk into the city square that bristles with the young; school children in green and blue uniforms, tight huddles of college dudes sharing a smoke, and the petite girls swishing long black hair and wearing bright shoes-and spend few moments relieving my own schooldays. Sturdy legs will go uphill and downhill, as charming shops and boutiques beckoned. I’ll touch muslin and silk and slip my feet into a dozen shoes and read in bookstores; but will end up buying an orange notebook, a keychain of a doll with stringy hair and a pair of socks. I will not visit the waterfalls and the peak that the crowds throng. Instead I will eat a warm croissant in a tiny café and watch the rain trickle down a sloping green roof.

At noon I would go out of town along picturesque roads lined with pine trees; driving past a house with blue picket fence and people whose eyes crinkled delightfully with laughter. And I will literally live on the edge, looking down steep hillsides and looking up at cottony clouds. A sharp curve and a sacred forest will loom in the horizon.

 

And the pristine wilderness suffused with an eerie green light will be everything I’d ever imagined it to be. Trees will rise high like lithe black limbs, saplings will bloom with orange flowers, creepers will slither along mossy tree trunks, and I’ll sidestep delicate herbs and mushrooms as I walk on a floor of dried leaves that would crunch under my shoes.

 

I will jump over fallen tree trunks and a tangle of white roots; duck under thorny bushes and tackle precarious slopes. The sun will shine through a leafy canopy, and it will be a mellow sun. A tree will be shaped like a bulbous nose and ancient stone relics will bring in the mystery. 

 

I might see something majestic tomorrow, but the absolute stillness of the forest will stay with me forever.

 

I would step out into a goliath green ground with lilliputian yellow flowers, like tiny suns. I would let the dew on the grass wet my feet as I look down the beautiful valley of farm fields and a gurgling brook.

At dusk I would return to town and finally join a crowd to watch the sunset, sitting on a hillock at an old golf course.

Dinner will be savored at a restaurant resplendent with colonial architecture, mahogany pillars and velvet cushions. And wicker chairs on the patio too.

On the way back, I will walk under a lamp post that will remind me of Narnia. In bed I will read Kipling as the a flirtatious breeze made the curtains dance. “

OR

I would spend a day in Shillong.

(Mundane details: Stay at The White Orchid guesthouse in Upper Lachumiere and a morning walk in its picturesque surroundings; walking around in Laitumkhrah, eating street food, shopping; a trip to Mawphlang sacred grove, sunset at Polo Grounds, and dinner at Hotel Pinewood.)

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Book review- ‘Empires of the Indus’ by Alice Albinia

A year ago I bought a copy of the ‘Outlook Traveler’ magazine and was highly intrigued by an extract from Alice Albinia’s book “Empires of the Indus”. But it was only recently while browsing through a bookstore at Mumbai airport I came upon the paperback edition and bought it immediately. But  my reading of this delightful book got delayed and it was only yesterday that I sat down to read the book that included two of my biggest passions: Travel and History.

Alice Albinia’s book is the best book in the travel literature genre that I’ve read in recent times. Wanderlust, astonishing sense of adventure, and a never-ending hunger to gather little known facts and the history of every place she visits is what makes her such a brilliant travel writer. A lot of research has gone into the making of the book, and it is evident from the numerous journals, books and ancient scripts she quotes to emphasize her findings. It’s the best kind of book with such a delightful mixture of travel, descriptions of the people, the culture, the history, the flaws, the merits, the geography, the architecture, the political scenario, quaint facts and trivia about every place she sets foot on while tracing the course of Indus.

She traces the Indus from it’s delta in Sindh, Pakistan and reaches up to it’s source in the mountains of Tibet and travelling through Afghanistan, India and China in between. I won’t mention the details of the exhaustive list of facts she unearths during her travels, but here is a glimpse of few intriguing facts that the book describes.

1. Pakistan’s current political, cultural and social scenario through the eyes of a foreigner who is well accustomed to their language and mingles effortlessly into their customs. An in-depth view of the delta region to swat valley. She brings into light for us the various tribes, their cultures, their living conditions within the country…Sheedis in particular, who claim to be descendants of Bilal, an Ethiopian man who was Prophet Mohammed’s companion.

2. She traces and co-relates the origin, rise or fall of various religions on the banks of the Indus. Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Christianity, all evolved through centuries and highly influenced by invasions and pilgrimages on the Indus valley. Hinduism proliferated during the early eleventh and tenth century A.D. and has persisted through the centuries despite invasion by Muslim rulers in the Indus Valley. She describes the Sadhubela temple in Pakistan, the Hindus worshipping Uderolal or Jhule Lal, the river God of Indus who travels on four palla fish. And then there was the spread of Buddhism mainly by King Asoka as far as the borders of Afghanistan. The Buddhist stupas, the Bamiyan Buddha, the Buddhist people of Ladakh and Tibet, Chinese pilgrims tracing the routes of spread of Buddhism centuries ago…everything comes alive in Albinia’s descriptions. Then Islam came with Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, whose plundering of the famed Indian treasures is a historical legend. Mughals followed but with varying tolerance for other religions, from Emperor Akbar’s exemplary tolerance to Aurangazeb’s zilch religious tolerance.

Then Sikhism started out in 15th century, with Guru Nanak’s birth in the Indus valley, and the spread of Sikhism throughout the centuries by the rest of the ten Gurus, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s rule, and the holy place Nankana Sahib still in Pakistan. She also visits the Golden Temple in Amritsar, on the banks of the tributaries of the Indus. Christianity came late with the British invasion of India, and it’s spread by Christian missionaries. The influence of British on the people and the customs of this region, the tactics followed by the British to spread their empire are wonderfully detailed too. Right up to the Independence of India.

3. She deals with the Partition of India, the after-effects, the large-scale migration, and the horrible massacres in the name of religion and the geographical boundaries which were peacefully cohabited by the same people for ages. The “divide and rule” policy of British culminating in the Partition of India, the thoughts and arguments of the Indian and Pakistani politicians who witnessed, welcomed or argued this change; a valuable insight is provided by the book.

4. She also describes the people and their varying customs in every place with perfect detailing; the Pashtuns, the Sheedis, the Ladakhis, the Dards, the Kalash being the most interesting. The Kalash have their own religion, resides in mountainous Northern Pakistan, a community whose customs have remained unvaried through thousands of years, believed to be the original Aryans, has the custom of burying people in open coffins, and the women enjoys the kind of freedom which is rare in the country. She also writes about the polyandrous communities of Ladakh and Tibet, where women have dominated men throughout the centuries. The polyandry is more out of necessity than personal choice, the limited resources makes traditional marriages a no-no because inheritance problems will arise in the little provisions the families have.

5. Architecture and heritage sites are a prominent feature in this book. The Harrapan and Mohenjo-Daro civilizations, the Buddhist statues and stupas, the numerous caves and stone circles populating the Indus banks, the temples and mosques dating back thousands of years, and stone carvings some dating back to 80,000 years, she encounters them all. But is dismayed by the indifference these architectural jewels are treated by people and little has been done for their preservation by the archaeological societies.

6. Albinia writes beautifully about her final and highly adventurous journey to the source of Indus in Tibet. But she’s in for a terrible shock when she realizes that the Chinese had dammed the Indus a few months ago and she had actually been following the tributaries of Indus all along. The construction of dams altering the course of a river, that originated far earlier than humans arrived on this Earth and had flowed without anyone disturbing it’s course, for purposes like generating electricity and irrigation has altered the entire geography and as a result the lives of the people inhabiting that region. Poorly planned and injudicious construction of dams by all the countries through which the Indus flows is highly condemned in the book. By construction of the dams in India and Pakistan, Punjab has the best irrigated fields but the people of the delta have to drink diluted sewage water or the highly saline water. Agriculture is impossible and only fishing in the ocean remains the only source of livelihood there. The aquatic animals have suffered too, by dams blocking their routes of migration.

7. She describes the Indian and Pakistani border military camps, the Kargil war, the sentiments of the people involved, Kargil now, and the issue of Kashmir, the object of dispute since Partition.

I’ve left out a million details, but I highly recommend this book to everyone if history and travel even remotely intrigues you.

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Travel Literature…

Books and Travel are two interests that I pursue passionately. And to merge them both is heaven on earth for me. Travel literature is a genre that I intend to explore avidly this year. The experience of a traveler is always a delightful read. Travel literature is not a log of dates, popular tourist destinations, best food and shopping destinations. It’s the narrative of a wild-eyed tourist who explores little known destinations or well known ones with a new insight. It can be factual accounts or tinged with fantasy. It’s not mandatory to deal with a particular region; it can be cross cultural or trans national. It can document explorations, exotic adventures, voyages, and the different in places. It may describe the geographical territory, the history, the culture, the people, the political scenario but with a pithy narrative and poetic vision. I adore travel literature, fact or fiction, because it often brings forth a fresh, new perspective of a destination, the journey, the experience, the joy of travel. I enjoy travelling a lot and after reading outdoor literature the desire to explore new places only gets heightened. It’s almost orgasmic for me to read the classics of travel literature. Ever since the time I read Lewis Carroll’s “The adventures of Alice in Wonderland” and Swift’s “Gulliver’s travels”, when I was around this high, I was mesmerized by the ability of authors to take us on wonderful, fascinating journeys through the medium of literature. In the past couple of years I’d read Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux and Amitav Ghosh, his “Sea of Poppies” being my most recent read of his nautical trilogy. I not only want to read the books by contemporary authors but also of those who lived a long time back. The rare travel accounts of the medieval times or even a couple of centuries back are something I hope to read someday. Those were the days when travels were rare and adventurous journeys were taken to far lands. Soldiers during battles, vikings during plundering, traders during voyages carrying spices and silk, historians documenting the rise and fall of dynasties, pilgrims and missionaries visiting holy places, the common workmen crossing countries in search of work, explorers in search of a new land, royalty in search of new regions of conquest… I want to devour all these travel accounts. Right from Marco Polo to Patrick French.
The following are a list of books on my wish list this year. I don’t know whether I would find them all, and more importantly afford them all! And I would be grateful if readers of my post share any information about the availability of inexpensive used copies of the following books. On my student budget, these gems of travel literature seem a distant dream.
Here are the collected and edited excerpts from book reviews of each book which intrigued me to put them in the reading wish list for the year:

1. A Barbarian in Asia- Henri Michaux

It’s an interesting look at 1930s Southern and Eastern Asia through this Frenchman’s eyes. He traveled through India, the Himalayas, southern India, Ceylon, Malaya (from Malaysia to Bali), China, and Japan. Strongly recommended – though natives of these lands might take offense. An original and stimulating refraction of the Orient through a very special personality.

2. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia, by Rebecca West

A well-educated, upper class Briton, West a professional writer and literary critic, not to mention H.G. Wells’ mistress and mother of his son, traveled widely throughout Yugoslavia during the mid- and late-30s. It is extremely insightful, as West unravels the often extraordinarily intricate relationships among the various ethnic and religious groups, and the often torturous reasoning behind some of the political developments in the region. Beyond the descriptions of people, culture, and history, it is West’s details about the places she sees that are the most moving and alluring. One wants to wander through the former Yugoslavia as she did, seeing the beauty of the land and cityscapes. But this book isn’t just about Yugoslavia. It is also about Europe on the brink of war.

3. A Journey in Ladakh- Andrew Harvey

A classic among readers interested in Tibetan Buddhism and pilgrimages of the spirit of all kinds, A Journey in Ladakh is Andrew Harvey’s spiritual travelogue of his arduous journey to one of the most remote parts of the world the highest, least populated region in India, cut off by snow for six months each year. Buddhists have meditated in the mountains of Ladakh since three centuries before Christ, and it is there that the purest form of Tibetan Buddhism is still practiced today.

4.Hindoo Holiday- J.R.Ackerley

The double ‘o’ in Hindoo Holiday immediately signals that we are returning to another time. An era that was tragic, perhaps, in its essence, but comic in its particulars; a time of unspeakable wealth and inconceivable poverty, continual cultural misunderstandings, unfettered whimsy, and cruelties large and small: the age of the British Raj and the Indian princes. In the 1920s, the young J. R. Ackerley spent several months in India as the personal secretary to the maharajah of a small Indian principality. In his journals, Ackerley recorded the Maharajah’s fantastically eccentric habits and riddling conversations, and the odd shambling day-to-day life of his court. Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature. Ackerley is hardly impressed by any monuments or traditions and his focus is people.

5. In Patagonia- by Bruce Chatwin

In this travel book on Patagonia, Argentina, Bruce Chatwin gives us a delightful account of his trip, taken in 1977. The structure of the book is different from most other travel books – Chatwin goes off looking for one thing, gets sidetracked on to some other and then on to something else. We are given history pertaining to the area; Chatwin’s research is simply astonishing. He travels incessantly and doesn’t hesitate to go the distance to ferret out the story. From looking for the Patagonian creature mylodon to stories about *** Cassidy and a lot of Argentine and Chilean folklore, this is a great book.

6. Shadow of the silk road – Colin Thubron.

He’s the dean of British travel writers. This is his ninth travel book and it chronicles his 7,000-mile journey in 2003 and 2004 (begun when he was about to turn 64) from Xian, China, to the Turkish coastal city of Antioch. The Silk Road Thubron travel is not one road but a “fretwork” of trade routes dating back to 1500 B.C. From the east on the Silk Road came Chinese gunpowder, printing and paper, the astrolabe and compass, silk and Buddhism. From the west came woods, fruits, metals, musical instruments and Christianity. And that was just for starters.

7. Tibet, Tibet- Patrick French

In 1999, French decided to go on a trip covering Tibet from west to east. The purpose of this trip was to demythicise and deromanticise Tibet. Although this is a land adored for peaceful spirituality, it reveals a surprising early history of fierce war-making and its equally fierce monks aka. Dob-dobs. What makes this book so engaging is that Patrick French writes this as a part memoir, part history book, part travelogue, part narrative and part political analysis. The author also reminds readers that the Tibetan empire once stretched as far as Afghanistan and its soldiers laid siege to Samarkand. As Tibet’s influence waned, its king was dragged in shame through the streets of Baghdad, like, French writes, ‘a downed American pilot.’
As a travel writer he paints us a picture of Tibet as a harsh, remote untouched land and nearly the most sparsely populated. A land of blue sheep ringed by snow peaks and impassable high-altitude deserts, dropping to fields of jasmine and turquoise lakes…quite seductive.

8. The Marsh Arabs- by Wilfred Thesiger

During the years he spent among the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq—long before they were almost completely wiped out by Saddam Hussein—Wilfred Thesiger came to understand, admire, and share a way of life that had endured for many centuries. Traveling from village to village by canoe, he won acceptance by dispensing medicine and treating the sick. In this account of a nearly lost civilization, he pays tribute to the hospitality, loyalty, courage, and endurance of the people, and describes their impressive reed houses, the waterways and lakes teeming with wildlife, the herding of buffalo and hunting of wild boar, moments of tragedy, and moments of pure comedy in vivid, engaging detail.

9. The Snow Leopard- by Peter Matthiessen

When Peter Matthiessen set out with the field biologist George Schaller from Pokhara, in northwest Nepal, their hope was to reach the Crystal Mountain — a foot journey of 250 miles or more across the Himalaya — in the Land of Dolpo, on the Tibetan plateau. Since they wished to observe the late-autumn rut of the bharal, or Himalayan blue sheep, they undertook their trek as winter snows were sweeping into the high passes, and five weeks were required to reach their destination. At Shey Compaa, a very ancient Buddhist shrine on the Crystal Mountain, the Lama had forbidden all killing of wild animals, and bharal were said to be numerous and easily observed. Where they were numerous there was bound to appear that rarest and most beautiful of the great cats, the snow leopard. Hope of glimpsing this near-mythic beast in the Snow Mountains would be reason enough for the entire journey.

10. The Lawless Roads- by Graham Greene

Greene wanted to examine firsthand a situation that troubled him. The Mexican Catholic Church was being systematically oppressed by the anti-clerical government of President Calles in the late 1930s. Struggling with very limited Spanish, traveling by trains, taxis and donkey-back, constantly prey to dysentery, Greene found his way to Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico whose history of oppression and rebellion continues unabated to this day. The guides sneered, the people were primitive, the relics and catacombs were cramped, barren, uninspiring. Greene’s Mexico is dusty, ailing, and acrid.

11. The Mirror of the sea- Joseph Conrad

Every sentence is a gem. Sentences deserve to be read and reread and reread. Strictly reflection, and not a novel, given love offers up the character and the characters of the sea. Rather selflessly too, given Conrad rarely uses I. Still here, in the mirror, he writes in first person.

12. Scrambles Amongst the Alps by Edward Whymper

Account of numerous first ascents and other exploratory climbs in the Alps during the golden age of mountaineering, all woven around the ongoing obsession with being the first to scale the Matterhorn. The book culminates with that famous climb and the terrible accident during the descent.

13. Roughing It- by Mark Twain

It’s not often you get to read a travelogue that takes you through such a variety of localities and events, which features amusing yet revealing personal meetings with historically important figures, such as Brigham Young, and yet has been written by a renowned author. With his usual humor, and plenty of exaggerated description, Twain leads the reader west by stagecoach to the mining fields of Virginia City in Nevada, where he spent considerable time, and thence on to California, finally even going on to Hawaii, where he meets the redoubtable queen of those islands. By turns hilarious and fascinating.

14. Dersu the Trapper by Vladimir Arseniev

Arseniev was a surveyor-explorer working for the Czar’s government around the turn of the century, and assigned to do a series of explorations in the Russian Far East, along the Pacific. He found as a guide an old native hunter, Dersu, and his tales of adventures in the ensuing years, among the forests of Siberia, and the relationship between himself, a man of the city and modern civilization, and Dersu, a true man of nature, who lived alone all year as a wandering hunter, are fascinating and often enlightening reading.

15. Over the High Passes by Christina Noble

Christina Noble spent a year in the Indian Himalaya and the plains of Punjab, with the nomadic Gaddi people and their flocks, following them and living with them as they moved from the plains into the Himalaya to their high pastures. Exhilarating and refreshingly optimistic, her narrative tells of the people with whom she lived and came to know, and of their adventures together among some of the roughest mountain terrain in the world. Well written, this book helps us understand that other ways of life are as good as our own, and that the adventures we seek are just the stuff of daily life for many people in the world.

Here are two links related to travel literature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_literature
http://www.travelliterature.org/

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