Footloose in the Himalaya

by Bill Aitken

Away from over-used tourist trails and trekking routes, Bill Aitken wanders through the Himalaya. His inclination is to enter disused colonial dak bungalows and ruined temples, meander in wild glades above the treeline carpeted with wild flowers, filling his water bottle from mountain springs and waterfalls. Having left his native Scotland in his twenties to circumnavigate the world, Aitken reached the Himalaya and stopped, enraptured. He began wandering through these mountains then, and has only stopped on and off in the last forty years to do more mundane things like travelling the Deccan on his motorbike or chasing the last steam locomotive in India. His journeys in the mountains have ranged from Arunachal to Kashmir, from the icy heights of Zanskar and the Nanda Devi to the small towns of Mussoorie and Ranikhet. For Aitken, travel in the Himalaya is as much about the spirit as about landscapes, leeches, and aching knees. This sets him on a lively trail of holy men, both saintly and fraudulent, across all the pilgrim centres of the Himalaya. He travels in bulging buses to Rishikesh and Badrinath, Kedarnath and Gangotri. He seeks out tiny disused temples to little-known deities like Anasuiya, and discovers a village with temples dedicated to Duryodhana. He spends seven ascetic years in an ashram at Mirtola. All along he gropes for an answer to the what power does the Himalaya possess that has drawn generations of seekers to it? If anything distinguishes Aitken from the regular travel writer, it is his inspired craziness. With his wide-ranging, sometimes eccentric, interests, this book is replete with literature, geology, philosophy, and folklore. There are detours into hill gossip, stories of local ghosts, accounts of local customs, and exasperated asides about political ineptitude. Bill Aitken s intimate knowledge of the Himalaya, absorbed through a lifetime, makes this more a native s account than a traveller s.

Genres: Travel

250 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

William McKay Aitken was a British-born Indian travel writer and mountain lover from Scotland. He was the author of a number of books about India, its mountains, rivers and its steam trains.

Reviews

[Vikas Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bill Aitken’s intimate knowledge of the Himalayas and hilly way of life, attained over a long period of his trekking experiences, makes it an enjoyable read. Not a standard run of the mill travelogue or guide book, like a true lover of nature, Bill brings alive the hills and their natural beauty in a manner that eaves you spell bound and longing for more.

[Jacqueline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually couldn’t finish it. Not very well written

[Vaishnavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I sincerely wish I could have given the book four stars. But the book did not meet my expectations. It was not half as romantic or poetic as I would have expected a book on the Himalayas to be. The author fails to capture the beauty and grandeur of it all. The narrative may be helpful to a trekker but for those like me who travel through the pages alone, the names of places and random people may be confusing and tedious. What remains ultimately is a flurry of meaningless names with no image that one would expect to take shape in the mind at the mention of the names. However one cannot forget the author's sincerity, dedication, yearning and love for the mountains and I am grateful that he decided to write the book. It would have been a loss not to have read it. But it is no ode to the mighty Himalayas.

[Sneha · Rating 4 out of 5]

dying to get to Mussoorie now

[Harshit · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Review of the book can be read here
http://booklibraryreviews.blogspot.in...