Tales of the Open Road: Signed as on Road with Ruskin Bond

by Ruskin Bond

'I have come to believe that the best kind of walk, or journey, is the one in which you have no particular destination when you set out.' Ruskin Bond's travel writing is unlike what is found in most travelogues, because he will take you to the smaller, lesser-known corners of the country, acquaint you with the least-famous locals there, and describe the flora and fauna that others would have missed. And if the place is well known, Ruskin leaves the common tourist spots to find a small alley or shop where he finds colourful characters to engage in conversation. Tales of the Open Road is a collection of Ruskin Bond's travel writing over fifty years. Here, you will encounter a tonga ride through the Shivaliks, a hidden waterfall near Rishikesh, walks along the myriad streets of Delhi (one of which used to be the richest in Asia), trips down the Grand Trunk Road, stopovers in little tea stalls in the hills around Mussoorie, and an excursion to the icy source of the Ganga at over ten thousand feet above sea level. Enriched by rare photographs that Ruskin took during his travels, Tales of the Open Road is a celebration of small-town and rural India by its most engaging chronicler.

Genres: Nonfiction, India, Travelogue, Travel

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Ruskin Bond is an Indian author of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children's authors and a top novelist. He wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was seventeen which won John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written several novellas, over 500 short stories, as well as various essays and poems, all of which have established him as one of the best-loved and most admired chroniclers of contemporary India. In 1992 he received the Sahitya Akademi award for English writing, for his short stories collection, "Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra", by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters in India. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children's literature. He now lives with his adopted family in Landour near Mussoorie.

Reviews

[Malvika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tales of the Open Road by Ruskin Bond. The kind of book that gets you out of a reading slump and makes you want to run away to the mountains. More than telling you about places, this one will teach you how to experience them. As always, Ruskin Bond has been a pleasure.

[Mallika Mahidhar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tales of the Open Road are Bond's stories of his travels and walks, mainly across North India. He starts with his love for walking which made me fall in love with the book immediately. (Besides the fact that it is Ruskin Bond)

I love how he talks about the mountains, birds, flowers and makes you fall in love with every tiny detail that people forget to enjoy.

Favourite line from the book: 'But there are some who will walk anyway, because they have always been walking.'

[Richard Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in bits n pieces in the last couple of months, mostly during my travel to the very places the author has written about. This is my fourth read by Ruskin Bond and needless to say won't be the last. He continues to amaze me with his wits, humor, things put so simply that urges me to keep reading.
This is more of a travelogue where he has written his short trips in parts of Delhi, Agra, the Grand Truck Road and most hillbilly parts of Uttaranchal (Now Uttarakhand). I loved the way he has brought two contrasting things together at various places in the book. One example being, the demise of his two half-brothers due to road accidents, one being drunk and careless and another being sober and a law-abiding driver.
It's definitely a great book to have in your backpack when you set off to any roads in the world. As is his style, you'll find amusing writings and descriptions of not so famous corners of the most visited tourist places. A must read for travel lovers.

[Ila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again, i read it to teach it, but it only left me wanting to go to the mountains.And made me see the truck drivers in a new light.

[Sreedev R · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always been a fan Ruskin bond and I came across this book when I was watching Book on toast in you tube. Since it was Ruskin bod I went on and bought it from amazon with no doubt in mind. This is a collection of well elaborated tales of Ruskin bods runaway to Gujarat and then to Delhi. I didn't got the chills from mountain air like we get it from other books of Ruskin bond but this book will poke the wanderlust in you and give you some crave to pack you bags, leave and explore.

[Saptaparna Saha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel writing in one of its simplest and alluring forms. A book which one can read at one go. A book which draws you in and makes you notice things that a conventional traveller wouldn't bother to notice. As the book description says, Bond takes you into the alleys of famous cities and gives you a chance to engage with the common people of India and their everyday stories.

[Vidushi Gupta]

Ruskin Bond is an avid traveler. He has spent most of his life in the hills of Mussoorie. He could walk endlessly regardless of the wee hours or the fear of being lonely on the roads in the hills.

With this book, Ruskin Bond has shared his journey on the lesser traveler roads of India. He will take you to the unknown corners of India and make you acquainted with the unsung locals. Ruskin Bond has shared his experiences of his truck journey on the Grand Trunk Road of India, tonga ride encounters through the villages of Shivalik hills, the risky jeep steer to Rishikesh, an excursion on the snow clad mountains of the Himalayas and those halts at the small tea shops by the side of the road while conversing with the shopkeeper.

He has painted the most beautiful scenery of the hills with his words and his simplicity. With this thought itself, I get tempted enough to pack my bags and run to the hills.

[Ananya Basak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh what pleasure it is to read a Ruskin Bond book! 🥺❤️

💚 "I knew quite definitely that I wasn't running away from anything, but that I was running towards something. Call it a dream, if you like. I was running towards a dream."

💚 "The sweetest sound of all, I decided, was silence. There are many kinds of silence - the silence of an empty room, the silence of the mountains, the silence of prayer, or the enforced silence of loneliness - but the best kind of silence, I concluded, was the silence that comes after the cessation of noise."

💚 "Hillman or plainsman, we have only our hopes to keep us going."

One of the most beautiful travelogues, I have ever read. 💛

#talesoftheopenroad #ruskinbond

[Chaitanya Tejaswi · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Must-Read; Leisure]
A potpourri of Bond's anecdotes as a hiker/wanderer amidst the many holy/touristy trails of Uttarakhand. I'm fond of his simple yet succinct and authentic representation of charming conversations with everyday people. It's as if you're a part of their conversation.

[F A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't even have to say anything. He is favorite since forever. ❤️ Best for light headed read

[Sudhir Kumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prose so beautiful and elaborate, that I left my room in this lockdown and was roaming the mountains with Ruskin bond himself. Just the usual. Extreme literary genius. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Shivani · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I am not for myself,
Who will be for me?
And if I am not for others,
What am I
And if not now, when?

[Ram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful set of stories set in the hills and little known places in North India in Uttarakhand by Ruskin Bond.

More at
https://medium.com/@vram45/tales-of-t...

[Debalina · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are great writers in this world who have given something new to the world in the form of their writings. Among them there are two classes : one whom you can't help but admire for their beautiful penmanship, and the second with whom you, unconsciously, fall in love. For the second class, admiration comes after love. The speciality of writers like J. K. Rowling and J. R. R. Tolkein is that you can't help but fall in love with their writings, the worlds that they have created, beautifully crafted and designed. You marvel at their ingenuity and their ability to grasp your soul with a brilliant involvement.

Among them in my list there is another guy who isn't a fantasy writer but who is so much in love with his own world that you must also fall in love with the world that he pens down and the view that helps him and you, through him, access the vista of that world. That guy is none other that our dear old Rusty or Ruskin Bond. His writings soothe your soul when you are down and give you a hope that apart from all the bad, there is another aspect of life which is always going to remain beautiful and pleasant no matter what. Those things are nature's bounties, its people, their general goodness, animals in the wild, rhododendrons of the mountainous valley, glitters of dew on them with the freshness they bring, a little girl who is very happy to see all this and an old soul who has found himself after being lost in these. When you read a Ruskin Bond, in all there experiences perhaps you have never been there, but you find yourself becoming a Ruskin Bond. I have been in love with whatever he pens down from the time I have started to appreciate the small things in life amidst all the crisis we face everyday.

This post is dedicated to 'Tales of the Open Road' by, yes, our dear old Ruskin Bond. As would be anyone for to guess, this book is a collection of travel pieces. It has been written over a time line of fifty years, and hence is as rich and as varied in point of view as fifty years of experience may entail one to, but united in the essence. The spirit is that of a wanderer who is in love with his wanderings and his places and peoples of wanderings...

The book starts with tales of highways and the GT Road, and Rusty takes us to those silent corners of the well trodden dusty road where he just spotted a cheetal, or just missed a leopard who was supposed to be there as per his driver. He, then, narrates his own story of running away from school with his friend Daljit, how they posed as tourists to avoid detection once and some long lost sikh relative of a friendly truck driver another time to make that journey which will just be a start to their grand voyages to Rome, New York, Dubai, London and so many exotic places in the world. He discovers in his journey the people of India and added to the cunning they let grow in you, he realizes some soft but some bitter truths about the roads , less or more but, travelled and unforeseeable surprises when the supposed and real ends do not meet. There are splashes of joy, spatters of disappointment, marvellous young ideas of adventurous school boys and a simple innocence that bind you to the tale. Rusty's roads are more about the bliss of travel rather than the ecstasy of the destination which not many times end in joie de vivre.

...

For the next part of this 'oh-so-detailed(!)' review, please visit ' http://dbthetablesareturned.blogspot.... ' only if you have a bit more patience than usual.

Happy reading! :)

[Varun Bhakay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ruskin Bond was, is, and will always be the primary source of the literary equivalent of comfort food. His work, now stretching across six decades, has long featured storytelling magnified by the ease with which he brings out the world of his stories, and by how succinct an image of post-Independence India he creates.

Tales of the Open Road is a travelogue that opens in the plains of North India and slowly makes its way up to the mighty Himalayas over four chapters, each dealing with a different region of the journey upwards. In designing the book so, Bond gives it a natural structure to enable his storytelling, rather than try to fit thins chronologically, which would not only result in a hodge-podge narrative but also test his reserves of memory, seeing as how the book recalls around fifty years of travel.

Bond takes you along on his journeys through the many open roads of this book with the simplicity of writing that is a trademark of his writing, narrating bits and pieces of treks to glaciers, walks through temple towns, and stories from the many places he has been to.

The open road along which the reader walks with Bond permits one to take it easy, to breathe in the smells and more than glimpse the sights. Like with a majority of his work, one feels like one is there with Bond as he braves an earthquake, sleeps in the open, and does all sorts of fun stuff.
I once again marvelled at Bond’s ability to make so entertaining, so interesting what might be routine in our lives, and probably is.

[Avani Ghangurde · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you haven’t traveled to the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas, or witnessed the mesmerising waters of Ganga, taking in the holy vibes of Rishikesh, Kedarnath and Badrinath, then Ruskin Bond’s collection of adventures penned in ‘Tales of the Open Road’ is sure to take you to that much-needed holiday away from abode. From the comfort of my couch, I managed to travel from Gujarat, Delhi, Agra, Mussoorie, navigated along the Grand Trunk Road and finally ended my excursion to the magnificent mountainous ranges of Tungnath, with Ruskin halting at every nook and corner which was tucked away from the tourists.

The anecdotes that the writer brings out while interacting with the localites- the true happy-go-lucky humans whose aim is merely to cater to the basic needs of their families is something that is beautifully narrated.

One of the travelogue that appeal to me the most was when Ruskin and his friend one day decide to bunk school and head to Gujarat to see the waters for the very first time. The story takes the reader back to Ruskin’s childhood dream and how he attempts to fulfill it, despite the numerous ups and downs, teaching us never to give up and how to make it till the end, beating all odds.

Rare photographs clicked by Ruskin himself on his voyage adds to the charm of the book which is in itself an epitome of India’s rich and varied country side.

[Manashi Ganguly · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do I think ? Does it come as any surprise when reading a ruskin bond ?

One rarely fails or gets dissappointed...you travel the road with Mr Bond(the mellowed one), and see life c ouple of decades ago when life was unhurried, India still trying to get up on its feet after its tiring Independence struggle and slowly life was picking up towards progress. Tourism was not so commerical and spending your holidays with friends by visiting places meant bus & train travels and then landing up at dharamshala , lodges, a friend's house or simple a lodge\motel.
Pick it up read, travel with your eyes closed ...relax.

Let the pressures of mordern life melt away once in a while, treat yourself with such readings.

[Sandeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hop on for a ride with Ruskin Bond and guess who else you have for company

- the hills
- nostalgia
- simplicity
- minimalism
- reminiscences of the colonial era
- a roller-coaster ride along Devabhumi Uttarakhand
- interesting encounters with common men
- late 20th century charm

With so much mind blowing ingredients how can I rate this book any less than a 5

Cheers,

How much and what all my travel to Gangotri, Uttarakhand, has taught me, I might never be able to put in words, but, I can definitely tell you that I'm a better person after that awesome trip!

[Somdutta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a informative travel book, where Ruskin Bond beautifully paints a picture of the hills and the mountains, the surrounding nature and it's people. I am a fan of his simple and lucid use of the English language. It makes me want to visit the hills.

[Bala Rajeesh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the book for its simple, for all language, the way Bond observed things around him, especially, when he wrote about, his childhood and, later about his discoveries in Delhi.
Afterwards, when it was about the mountains and the mountain rivers, I felt, it was not that exciting.

[Deepti · Rating 4 out of 5]

He loves travelling and infuses a love for travel in his readers - it's infectious!

[Kanishka Poddar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every traveler must read this book. It tells you what traveling & people means.

[Neha Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have come to believe that the best kind of walk, or journey, is the one in which you have no particular destination when you set out.