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Travelling In, Travelling Out: A Book of Unexpected Journeys
An essential traveller's companion This is an unusual collection of travel pieces by writers ranging from M.J. Akbar and Aman Nath to Devdutt Pattanaik, Jerry Pinto, Rahul Pandita and Advaita Kala.Featured here are essays on the changing face of the popular hill resort-Nainital, living as a Pakistani in the remote city of Copenhagen, a woman traveller being strip-searched at an American airport and traversing the dark interiors of the haunted Bhangarh Fort in Rajasthan, among others. Focusing on the Indian experience, the book captures a country of shifting landscapes - physical, cultural, psychological. A departure from the traditional travel narrative, this is a unique collection for the travel-book buff.
- GenresTravelNonfiction
332 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 25, 2019
Anthologies are always interesting.There is something for everyone.Further,a travel anthology has lots to offer to a reader who loves travelogues.In this book,there are different stories/snippets/essays written by authors ranging from mythologist Devdutt Patnaik to HM Queen Mother of Bhutan.Its very interesting to read.Ofcourse,one can't connect to all the "contributions" and anthologies are not perfect generally.But still,give it a try.
September 20, 2020
This book is an anthology of 26 pieces, on travel, by different writers. Some are travel memoirs of self or someone else, some are write - ups about travel in the philosophical sense, some are memoirs about life in a particular place. Each piece adds a very novel insight about the concept of travel, an interesting information or trivia about certain places, their people, their cultures. Did you know that there is a Muslim Goddess for protection from tigers in the Sunderbans? Or that there is an Indian hospice in the heart of Jerusalem? Or that the Saranda forest, infamous for infested with Naxalites, is Asia's largest sal forest? Do you know how the tribals live inside this forest, barely subsisting on products derived from this forest? Do you know how the Indian map has evolved over the years, or the crucial role played by the British in mapping the country in details? Did you ever wonder how ancient Indians went on pilgrimages and yet there isn't a map charting all these holy places?
Then there are stories of different flavours: a hilarious anecdote of an old Indian king in his palace in Rajasthan, or when Bulbul Sharma slowly learns the ways of village life in Himachal; there are horror stories of all kinds: Ipsita Roy Chakraverti's visit to Bhangarh, Rahul Pandita's encounter with naxals in Bastar and Advaita Kala's trauma of being frisked in an American airport. And then there are pieces describing travel in a completely different manner: Devdutt Pattanaik's take on travelling mentally through thoughts, or Wendell Rodricks way of following the trail of the Konkani cuisine and language, Nisha Susan's writing about the journey of Gond Art from a tribal village to the highest echelons of art: Sotheby's, or Namita Gokhale's armchair travel done by reading a travelogue!
There are stories about places: Jerry Pinto and Aakar Patel's stories about Dharavi and Mumbai respectively, M. J. Akbar's writeup about Saranda and HM The Queen Mother's memories of her childhood in Bhutan. And finally, there are travellers who have been displaced and spend their lives as nomads, trying to return home: Jehangir Bejan Tata who lost his ancestral home in Shanghai and was forced to migrate to USA; and a Sikh octogenarian who witnessed the bloody massacre of the partition as a child and visits his childhood village and home in Pakistan for one last time.
It's difficult to review an anthology but this book has curated a diverse mix of stories and excerpts from notable writers. It presents multiple perceptions about travel, how there is more to this word than just packing up a suitcase and moving from point A to B. Travel is about moving through space and time, travel is about exploring a place by walking through it, but also by observing and experiencing the people, their food, language, cultures and thoughts. Travel can be done by self, or through someone else's experiences. But whichever way you look at travel, the traveller always reaches the end point a different person.
This book is recommended as mind expanding, thought provoking, informative and a pleasant read.
Then there are stories of different flavours: a hilarious anecdote of an old Indian king in his palace in Rajasthan, or when Bulbul Sharma slowly learns the ways of village life in Himachal; there are horror stories of all kinds: Ipsita Roy Chakraverti's visit to Bhangarh, Rahul Pandita's encounter with naxals in Bastar and Advaita Kala's trauma of being frisked in an American airport. And then there are pieces describing travel in a completely different manner: Devdutt Pattanaik's take on travelling mentally through thoughts, or Wendell Rodricks way of following the trail of the Konkani cuisine and language, Nisha Susan's writing about the journey of Gond Art from a tribal village to the highest echelons of art: Sotheby's, or Namita Gokhale's armchair travel done by reading a travelogue!
There are stories about places: Jerry Pinto and Aakar Patel's stories about Dharavi and Mumbai respectively, M. J. Akbar's writeup about Saranda and HM The Queen Mother's memories of her childhood in Bhutan. And finally, there are travellers who have been displaced and spend their lives as nomads, trying to return home: Jehangir Bejan Tata who lost his ancestral home in Shanghai and was forced to migrate to USA; and a Sikh octogenarian who witnessed the bloody massacre of the partition as a child and visits his childhood village and home in Pakistan for one last time.
It's difficult to review an anthology but this book has curated a diverse mix of stories and excerpts from notable writers. It presents multiple perceptions about travel, how there is more to this word than just packing up a suitcase and moving from point A to B. Travel is about moving through space and time, travel is about exploring a place by walking through it, but also by observing and experiencing the people, their food, language, cultures and thoughts. Travel can be done by self, or through someone else's experiences. But whichever way you look at travel, the traveller always reaches the end point a different person.
This book is recommended as mind expanding, thought provoking, informative and a pleasant read.
November 21, 2023
Travel, unlike the popular misconception, is not the physical journey from one place to another. Travel can take you inwards, travel could comprise of experiences, travel could be through the mind of another. This eclectic set of essays was engrossing, informative and pure fun. The book is a decade old, and though 10 years is a very short time compared to the time spans the book crosses, you can see how the same book, if written today, will have a different set of essays too- reels and selfies would fit right in!
July 16, 2017
I haven't read a travel book in a while, and there couldn't have been a better book to welcome me back into the genre. I think it was the mention of Mishi Saran, whose Chasing The Monk's Shadow I really liked, that made me aware of this book.
What I loved about the book is its exploration of what travel could mean. That takes the book far beyond the standard travelogue writing. Journeys can be of different kinds - the simple physical movement from one place to another, to the exploration of the self within, "thought to thought", to seeing things in a different light and so on. This book has all that, and more.
Devdutt Pattanaik sets the tone well with the exploration of the idea of travel seen through the lens of Hindu mythology and civilisation and brings up the concept of parikrama - returning to the point from where we started. Ashok Ferrey throws in a fantastic light touch immediately after that - fortunes changing with time. This humour finds a neat continuation in Marie Brenner's take on holy India for the 5 star set. The tinge of cynicism is given full throttle in Mayank Austen Soofi's time travel in Nainital, but balanced beautifully with nostalgia and wistfulness.
Bulbul Sharma's journey to the hills is as much a journey within, and it talks of a place that almost stands still in time. This theme resonates in the detailing of Nobgang by Bhutan's Queen Mother. A darker turn of places where light does not enter is Ipsita Roy Chakraverti's exploration of the haunted fort of Bhangarh, and her writing forces one to acknowledge the limited understanding of forces unseen. Both MJ Akbar and Rahul Pandita throw light on yet another nuance of places in India that have remained outside of time, and people who continue to be exploited.
Mishi Saran's "A House for Mr.Tata" is a poignant tale of a place changing even as its memories remain firm in the minds of those who inhabited it. The closure missing in this is exactly what happens in Urvashi Butalia's partition based "The Persistence of Memory". Indeed, some journeys are for exploration, and some others, for closure.
Aveek Sen and Advaita Kala bring out nuances of contemporary travel, while faith is the key theme in the writings of Kota Neelima, Saba Naqvi and Navtej Sarna. The last one was specially enlightening as it mentions a Travancore Wing in a building in Jerusalem! And yes, I could not but think of the Malayali teashop joke as Lipton was being served to close this story!
Aakar's Patel's Bombay story is about the city changing his perceptions, while Jerry Pinto writes about the changing nature of Dharavi. A flip of sorts. Ali Sethi's sensitive take on Pakistanis in Copenhagen brings out an important concept in today's geo politics, even while exploring the idea of home and country. The armchair travels of Namita Gokhale across the Himalayas, Nisha Susan's exploration of Gond art, Aman Nath's insightful perspectives on beauty in India, the evolution of cartography in Manosi Lahiri's Maps For All Times all find a place in the book. A special mention for Wendell Rodricks' "Trailing the Tongue"- a fantastic piece on language, taste and nuances of how language and culture evolve over time.
Read, and let your mind travel.
What I loved about the book is its exploration of what travel could mean. That takes the book far beyond the standard travelogue writing. Journeys can be of different kinds - the simple physical movement from one place to another, to the exploration of the self within, "thought to thought", to seeing things in a different light and so on. This book has all that, and more.
Devdutt Pattanaik sets the tone well with the exploration of the idea of travel seen through the lens of Hindu mythology and civilisation and brings up the concept of parikrama - returning to the point from where we started. Ashok Ferrey throws in a fantastic light touch immediately after that - fortunes changing with time. This humour finds a neat continuation in Marie Brenner's take on holy India for the 5 star set. The tinge of cynicism is given full throttle in Mayank Austen Soofi's time travel in Nainital, but balanced beautifully with nostalgia and wistfulness.
Bulbul Sharma's journey to the hills is as much a journey within, and it talks of a place that almost stands still in time. This theme resonates in the detailing of Nobgang by Bhutan's Queen Mother. A darker turn of places where light does not enter is Ipsita Roy Chakraverti's exploration of the haunted fort of Bhangarh, and her writing forces one to acknowledge the limited understanding of forces unseen. Both MJ Akbar and Rahul Pandita throw light on yet another nuance of places in India that have remained outside of time, and people who continue to be exploited.
Mishi Saran's "A House for Mr.Tata" is a poignant tale of a place changing even as its memories remain firm in the minds of those who inhabited it. The closure missing in this is exactly what happens in Urvashi Butalia's partition based "The Persistence of Memory". Indeed, some journeys are for exploration, and some others, for closure.
Aveek Sen and Advaita Kala bring out nuances of contemporary travel, while faith is the key theme in the writings of Kota Neelima, Saba Naqvi and Navtej Sarna. The last one was specially enlightening as it mentions a Travancore Wing in a building in Jerusalem! And yes, I could not but think of the Malayali teashop joke as Lipton was being served to close this story!
Aakar's Patel's Bombay story is about the city changing his perceptions, while Jerry Pinto writes about the changing nature of Dharavi. A flip of sorts. Ali Sethi's sensitive take on Pakistanis in Copenhagen brings out an important concept in today's geo politics, even while exploring the idea of home and country. The armchair travels of Namita Gokhale across the Himalayas, Nisha Susan's exploration of Gond art, Aman Nath's insightful perspectives on beauty in India, the evolution of cartography in Manosi Lahiri's Maps For All Times all find a place in the book. A special mention for Wendell Rodricks' "Trailing the Tongue"- a fantastic piece on language, taste and nuances of how language and culture evolve over time.
Read, and let your mind travel.
March 26, 2018
Most of the pieces were interesting and some especially moving - The Persistence of Memory made me cry - but a few I found to be tedious and so could not give this collection five stars. Overall though, I happily recommend it, especially if, like me, you enjoy armchair travelling.
February 20, 2023
took my time reading this for no particular reason. the pieces in the second half are better. i liked "the persistence of memory" by urvashi butalia, about a guy visiting his village in pakistan again, the best.
March 15, 2020
Wholesome stories exploring different facets of India's past, present, and future.
April 8, 2014
This book is a treasure, a compendium of gossamer images to travel with, a collage that will haunt the reader, making him, in the process, to imagine newer journeys.
In “Moving to Bombay,” a fluid narrative recounts a young Gujarati man’s relocation to Mumbai in search of livelihood, an experience that blunts his ingrained sense of gender bias. Bombay to him represents the progress of self and the soul, and while the former is external (not superficial), the latter is internal (not always integral). I liked the journeys this essay made me take, in my mind’s eye, to places I too have called home: Poona (not Pune). Bombay (not Mumbai). Madras (not Chennai). Cochin (not Kochi). Goa. Chandigarh and Delhi.
“The Foreigner’s Situation” by Ali Sethi is about the dislocation that the Pakistani emigrants living in Denmark feel—often described as caught between ‘isolation’ and ‘integration’. Through the lives of an old painter who had married a white Danish woman, and two other Pakistanis, much younger, one of them married to a Pakistani though from a different caste, the essay captures the mood of these displaced people, called the Foreigners, as they struggle to balance their lives in a crowded neighbourhood where even the Danish police is afraid to visit.
When I came across the title “Beauty in India” by Aman Nath I was compelled to read it next. About Gandhi and the relevance of the potency of less as a tool to negotiate with fortitude, says the author, “In the Orient of dervishes, sadhus and yogis, fakir is an honorific title borne out of an understanding that poverty is necessary—ever desirable—to achieve proximity to God. This tradition of less is more gave Gandhi the power to wear just a loincloth, and it empowered him to disrobe British Europe of all its protocols, trappings and regalia.”
Fragile societies use temples and deities as lighthouses to discover the right course for a more meaningful life. Kota Neelima in “Tirupati” and Saba Naqvi in “A Muslim Goddess” reaffirm faith as a teasingly luminous idea.
Sometimes short bursts of intense-looking—the privilege that comes easy to a geographical outsider—can help bring focus to our ignored fallacies. I enjoyed the non-acerbic account of Marie Brenner as she carefully worded her frustrations in ‘A Retreat to Holy India” while staying at expensive spa resorts in Mysore and the Himalayas. She figured it out finally as she summed up, that the lesson, indeed, is within.
“A House for Mr. Tata” by Mishi Saran is an agonizing tale of a Parsi family’s inability to claim a property in Shanghai—a villa—which they had to leave behind while fleeing after the Communists took over in the 50s. The property still remains with the Chinese government, who, quite ironically, had vowed to uproot capitalism, but instead, have become a slave of it.
Two essays are set in Nainital or the areas surrounding it. The first, “In Search of Lost Time” by Mayank Austen Sufi, juxtaposes the old with the new, using a narrative, I paused to reflect, that was dense, succinct and packed with interesting information. And in the other, “In Armchair Travels,” Namita Gokhale explores the Himalayan Mountains through the notes of a tireless local whose proficiency to map his routes makes for a purgatory toolkit.
The lingering prose of “Village on Treasure Hill” transported me to the idyllic Nobgang, a small village in Bhutan, where the writer lived in her childhood, where men and women enjoyed equal statuses and the villagers listened to the only gramophone that played nothing but the sound of laughter.
I found “Bhangarh: Of Darkness and Light” by Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, flawed. Not just writing but also the content. I had to reread several sentences. Sample this: “The impression one gets as one enters is one of a town once vibrant now desolate.” The author says she doesn’t believe in superstition but ends up chanting mantras to release the trapped souls from the abandoned fort. Her surprise at the greenery of rural Alwar, a district that sits on the edge of Haryana, reflected basic lack of geographical knowledge. Nestled amidst the final stretch of the Aravali hills, Alwar has been known for its fertile, well irrigated land and a low water table. There are numerous lakes, many not motorable, besides 866 square kilometer of Sariska, a green wilderness right in its heart that is known for its flora, fauna and avifauna living amongst the dense forest of deciduous trees.
Namita Gokhale’s calling Dayanita Singh’s photographs “photographic fiction” sounded like an odd oxymoron, but when I turned the pages to look at the photographs more closely, I was mesmerized by their fictional dimension.
“Lost without a Face,” I thought in the beginning, exhibited a proximity to the inane, but as the writer transformed his brief experience of getting a photo clicked at a studio into an opportunity to reveal himself, I was left thinking about the impermanence of the human face.
Highly recommended.
In “Moving to Bombay,” a fluid narrative recounts a young Gujarati man’s relocation to Mumbai in search of livelihood, an experience that blunts his ingrained sense of gender bias. Bombay to him represents the progress of self and the soul, and while the former is external (not superficial), the latter is internal (not always integral). I liked the journeys this essay made me take, in my mind’s eye, to places I too have called home: Poona (not Pune). Bombay (not Mumbai). Madras (not Chennai). Cochin (not Kochi). Goa. Chandigarh and Delhi.
“The Foreigner’s Situation” by Ali Sethi is about the dislocation that the Pakistani emigrants living in Denmark feel—often described as caught between ‘isolation’ and ‘integration’. Through the lives of an old painter who had married a white Danish woman, and two other Pakistanis, much younger, one of them married to a Pakistani though from a different caste, the essay captures the mood of these displaced people, called the Foreigners, as they struggle to balance their lives in a crowded neighbourhood where even the Danish police is afraid to visit.
When I came across the title “Beauty in India” by Aman Nath I was compelled to read it next. About Gandhi and the relevance of the potency of less as a tool to negotiate with fortitude, says the author, “In the Orient of dervishes, sadhus and yogis, fakir is an honorific title borne out of an understanding that poverty is necessary—ever desirable—to achieve proximity to God. This tradition of less is more gave Gandhi the power to wear just a loincloth, and it empowered him to disrobe British Europe of all its protocols, trappings and regalia.”
Fragile societies use temples and deities as lighthouses to discover the right course for a more meaningful life. Kota Neelima in “Tirupati” and Saba Naqvi in “A Muslim Goddess” reaffirm faith as a teasingly luminous idea.
Sometimes short bursts of intense-looking—the privilege that comes easy to a geographical outsider—can help bring focus to our ignored fallacies. I enjoyed the non-acerbic account of Marie Brenner as she carefully worded her frustrations in ‘A Retreat to Holy India” while staying at expensive spa resorts in Mysore and the Himalayas. She figured it out finally as she summed up, that the lesson, indeed, is within.
“A House for Mr. Tata” by Mishi Saran is an agonizing tale of a Parsi family’s inability to claim a property in Shanghai—a villa—which they had to leave behind while fleeing after the Communists took over in the 50s. The property still remains with the Chinese government, who, quite ironically, had vowed to uproot capitalism, but instead, have become a slave of it.
Two essays are set in Nainital or the areas surrounding it. The first, “In Search of Lost Time” by Mayank Austen Sufi, juxtaposes the old with the new, using a narrative, I paused to reflect, that was dense, succinct and packed with interesting information. And in the other, “In Armchair Travels,” Namita Gokhale explores the Himalayan Mountains through the notes of a tireless local whose proficiency to map his routes makes for a purgatory toolkit.
The lingering prose of “Village on Treasure Hill” transported me to the idyllic Nobgang, a small village in Bhutan, where the writer lived in her childhood, where men and women enjoyed equal statuses and the villagers listened to the only gramophone that played nothing but the sound of laughter.
I found “Bhangarh: Of Darkness and Light” by Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, flawed. Not just writing but also the content. I had to reread several sentences. Sample this: “The impression one gets as one enters is one of a town once vibrant now desolate.” The author says she doesn’t believe in superstition but ends up chanting mantras to release the trapped souls from the abandoned fort. Her surprise at the greenery of rural Alwar, a district that sits on the edge of Haryana, reflected basic lack of geographical knowledge. Nestled amidst the final stretch of the Aravali hills, Alwar has been known for its fertile, well irrigated land and a low water table. There are numerous lakes, many not motorable, besides 866 square kilometer of Sariska, a green wilderness right in its heart that is known for its flora, fauna and avifauna living amongst the dense forest of deciduous trees.
Namita Gokhale’s calling Dayanita Singh’s photographs “photographic fiction” sounded like an odd oxymoron, but when I turned the pages to look at the photographs more closely, I was mesmerized by their fictional dimension.
“Lost without a Face,” I thought in the beginning, exhibited a proximity to the inane, but as the writer transformed his brief experience of getting a photo clicked at a studio into an opportunity to reveal himself, I was left thinking about the impermanence of the human face.
Highly recommended.
July 27, 2015
This book is a remarkable anthology of 25 short stories that tug on your heartstrings. The reason that I loved the stories in the book was because they were not mere descriptions about unknown places, but spoke to the essence of how I conceptualize travel. Explorations of the self in an unknown place took precedence over the place itself.
My favorite story was the moving, unresolved tale of Jehangir Tata’s house in Shanghai and his attempts to find out what happened to the house after the emergence of the communist party in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Mishi Saran in A House for Mr Tata, An Old Shanghai Tale, brings forth a narrative of booming optimism, the building of a new life in Shanghai, the fall of the business after the madness of the Cultural Revolution, the sudden fleeing from Shanghai to avoid prison, and consequently leaving behind a carefully accumulated life and a home. A home that jingled with merry laughter and good times has now been seized by the government and all Jehangir Tata, past his 95 years (who now lives in San Francisco) wants is a piece of paper that tells him what happened to his home as closure. It was such a magnificent story, and unfortunately its magnificence was drawn from such deep sadness.
Ali Sethi’s A Foreigner’s Situation an account about Pakistani immigrants in Copenhagen was another affecting tale. The layers of complexities involved in navigating color, religion, traditions, family, and local customs all clashed headlong in this story where the author follows a Pakistani who runs a travel agency. In a foreign land, what must a foreigner do? Should the foreigner assimilate into the new society and cut off ties, or must a foreigner retain traditions and not assimilate into the new life? And then the third option is to retain both, but yet never feel completely at home in either culture- be neither here nor there. This is the emotion that I have felt in the past five years of my graduate life in the US. A mixture of wanting to soak in everything that the country offers, and yet not wanting to let go of the place that I come from. Indeed, I have come close to shunning my roots several times. But then, what is it that ties me to my homeland in a foreign country? Is it my thoughts, my conversations with family and friends back home, cinema, is it books, is it music and art, is it theatre, is it people who share a connection to a country far away, or is it the flag hoisting every Independence day?
Stories of hill stations have a special place in my heart for the special brand of romance that they evoke. Growing up in the plains of Pune, hill stations always kindled feelings of mists, light rains, boarding schools, hidden glances, ambling walks on rain fed paths fresh from the fragrance of the first rain, and small towns- possibly all sorts of romantic hogwash. But, Mayank Austen Soofi’s story, In search of Lost Time, was another tale that reinforced my images of life in a hill station. I always yearned for a glimpse into the towns of Nainital, Mussorie, Dehradun, Ooty and have been rewarded in sporadic trips that only lasted for a day. I have imagined the hill station way of life to have a slow melody that is now lost, leaving behind a heady influx of tourists. I have only been to Nainital and Ooty and both the times, I felt saddened by the sight of these towns. The famed Nainital Lake reeked of sewage and the hills of Ooty was ugly with shacks. I hunted all over the towns for the image that I had conjured up in my mind, but I could not find them. Similarly, Soofi also laments the loss of places and a previous way of life in Nainital. He writes, “Old, pristine Nainital is preserved largely in people’s memories; only the residues of that fabled past is there to see and feel.”
One of the best book's that I have read in a long time. This book is to treasure. It imparts to the mundane and to the routine an inexplicable magic of journeys and jaunts.
For a longer reflection, head here: https://pagesandprose.wordpress.com/2...
My favorite story was the moving, unresolved tale of Jehangir Tata’s house in Shanghai and his attempts to find out what happened to the house after the emergence of the communist party in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Mishi Saran in A House for Mr Tata, An Old Shanghai Tale, brings forth a narrative of booming optimism, the building of a new life in Shanghai, the fall of the business after the madness of the Cultural Revolution, the sudden fleeing from Shanghai to avoid prison, and consequently leaving behind a carefully accumulated life and a home. A home that jingled with merry laughter and good times has now been seized by the government and all Jehangir Tata, past his 95 years (who now lives in San Francisco) wants is a piece of paper that tells him what happened to his home as closure. It was such a magnificent story, and unfortunately its magnificence was drawn from such deep sadness.
Ali Sethi’s A Foreigner’s Situation an account about Pakistani immigrants in Copenhagen was another affecting tale. The layers of complexities involved in navigating color, religion, traditions, family, and local customs all clashed headlong in this story where the author follows a Pakistani who runs a travel agency. In a foreign land, what must a foreigner do? Should the foreigner assimilate into the new society and cut off ties, or must a foreigner retain traditions and not assimilate into the new life? And then the third option is to retain both, but yet never feel completely at home in either culture- be neither here nor there. This is the emotion that I have felt in the past five years of my graduate life in the US. A mixture of wanting to soak in everything that the country offers, and yet not wanting to let go of the place that I come from. Indeed, I have come close to shunning my roots several times. But then, what is it that ties me to my homeland in a foreign country? Is it my thoughts, my conversations with family and friends back home, cinema, is it books, is it music and art, is it theatre, is it people who share a connection to a country far away, or is it the flag hoisting every Independence day?
Stories of hill stations have a special place in my heart for the special brand of romance that they evoke. Growing up in the plains of Pune, hill stations always kindled feelings of mists, light rains, boarding schools, hidden glances, ambling walks on rain fed paths fresh from the fragrance of the first rain, and small towns- possibly all sorts of romantic hogwash. But, Mayank Austen Soofi’s story, In search of Lost Time, was another tale that reinforced my images of life in a hill station. I always yearned for a glimpse into the towns of Nainital, Mussorie, Dehradun, Ooty and have been rewarded in sporadic trips that only lasted for a day. I have imagined the hill station way of life to have a slow melody that is now lost, leaving behind a heady influx of tourists. I have only been to Nainital and Ooty and both the times, I felt saddened by the sight of these towns. The famed Nainital Lake reeked of sewage and the hills of Ooty was ugly with shacks. I hunted all over the towns for the image that I had conjured up in my mind, but I could not find them. Similarly, Soofi also laments the loss of places and a previous way of life in Nainital. He writes, “Old, pristine Nainital is preserved largely in people’s memories; only the residues of that fabled past is there to see and feel.”
One of the best book's that I have read in a long time. This book is to treasure. It imparts to the mundane and to the routine an inexplicable magic of journeys and jaunts.
For a longer reflection, head here: https://pagesandprose.wordpress.com/2...
March 12, 2018
A truly wonderful, diversified and wide-range collection of travel writings that encompasses true adventure and longing, nostalgia, spiritualism, religion, modern cities, races, food, art, tribals, metaphysical, maps, etc.
The best thing about the book is that its compilation is eclectic and does not bore you. Each piece is a novelty and a treat in itself and the authors are also distinguished people ranging from diplomats to art critics to fashion designers to jounalists, authors, wicca experts and what not. A very likable read.
The best thing about the book is that its compilation is eclectic and does not bore you. Each piece is a novelty and a treat in itself and the authors are also distinguished people ranging from diplomats to art critics to fashion designers to jounalists, authors, wicca experts and what not. A very likable read.
August 6, 2014
What a lovely find! A treasure trove of articles and essays woven around the theme of travel. I say 'travel' loosely here, as these articles are not the typical travelogues expected from such works, but are much more than that. They deal evocatively with every aspect related to travel, from the preparation involved to the actual journey undertaken; emotional upheavals encountered along the way; wistful memoirs of times gone by; and even the idea of travel as the ultimate healer of long-set wounds.
Wonderfully edited by Namita Gokhale, this book is a must read for all inveterate travellers.
Wonderfully edited by Namita Gokhale, this book is a must read for all inveterate travellers.
June 3, 2014
The best piece in this very readable collection is by Bangalore-based journalist Aakar Patel on Mumbai, or Bombay as it used to be called when he first arrived in the city, in 1994 as a 25-year-old, to earn a living. "Moving to Bombay" is just five pages long, but for distilling the essence of what it means to thrive in Maximum City, it is hard to beat.
December 30, 2015
Every story narrated on this book transports a reader to places, lesser known on this planet ,that are filled with culture, history, and emotions! Pick a copy of this book if you love travelling around the world!
June 4, 2014
A beautiful compendium of mind travel stories and essays. Some of the essays are extremely informative, some highly thought provoking.
May 25, 2016
Fantastic little collection of travel essays.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews