If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India

by Srinath Perur

This delightful travelogue around ten conducted tours is full of rich
experiences: hanging on to a camel in the Thar, rediscovering music on the
trail of Kabir, joining thousands on an ancient pilgrimage in Maharashtra,
crossing living root bridges near Cherrapunji, and more.
As much about people as places, the book is also a reflection on the
nature of popular travel today marked by the packaging of experiences,
the formation of tourist economies and compulsive picture-taking. How
this influences tourists comes through vividly: in their creating a ‘mini-
India’ in a bus, while racing through treasured sights in Europe; in their
perfunctory devotion while hopping from temple to temple in Tamil Nadu;
in their ‘enjoying’ with sex workers far away from home.
Deeply felt, ironic, and often comic, the book entertains and enlightens,
and becomes an idiosyncratic portrait of India and her people.

Genres: Travel, India, Nonfiction, Travelogue, Indian Literature, Humor, Essays

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2013

About the author

Srinath Perur is the author of If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai and the translator of Ghachar Ghochar. He writes on travel, science, cities and culture for various publications. He lives in Bangalore.

Reviews

[Lavanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel writing as a genre had never really interested me. I am fairly certain that the numerous English Comprehension tests I wrote in school that featured extraordinarily tiresome pieces on places around the world are to blame. After I passed out, I’d read very little travel writing and whatever I’d read, I found to be too introspective and unnecessarily geographical for my taste, if not boring. Through the years, I managed to maintain the same distance one does with dull, but well meaning uncles with it: far, but somewhat friendly. So I suppose it was slightly out of character that I picked up Srinath Perur’s “If It’s Monday, It Must Be Madurai” - a collection of ten travel essays, based wholly on conducted/group tours the author has taken.

It was one of the essays (“Memorial For The Victims Of Repression”), which was published as an excerpt in the Open Magazine that initially piqued my interest in the book. The essay featured his participating in a conducted sex tour to Uzbekistan. Perur, as the self-appointed fly on the wall among a group of repressed Indian men, is a joy to read. What I particularly loved in that essay, and as I would later find out, the entire book, was that he does not pass judgment on any of his travel companions - He merely observes, but his observations bear the kind of extreme sincerity that toes on sarcasm, and delightfully so.

I laughed with this book in ways I have not laughed with a book in a very long time. There are some paragraphs in his essay on a conducted tour of Rajasthan, “Desert Knowledge, Camel College” that are so hilarious that I read them a couple more times for extra giggles. “The Grace of God”, an essay in which he describes his experience travelling across Tamil Nadu on a temple tour, made me reminisce about my own family’s seemingly never ending temple trips on which I was a very reluctant attendee. In “Saare Jahaan Se Accha”, he takes on Europe with his Desi tour group. Perur makes many earnest (and thoroughly amusing) observations about his group's uniquely Indian characteristics. However, one stood out for me - that of the the foresight of some of the members who had packed snacks and food from home. The reason it did, was because it brought back a rather stark memory from a trip my family made to Hong Kong in 2010, where we wandered around Ocean Park, hungry (we were vegetarians and finding vegetarian food in ocean park was akin to finding the proverbial needle in a literal haystack), for close to an hour until we bumped into a family who were kind enough to give us the food they had packed from home for their trip.

Perur writes about taking a trip to the North East in “According to Their Own Genius”. Reading the essay made me feel quite sad. It seemed I was more familiar with the places and culture discussed in the essay about Europe than I was about places in my own country! “Real India”, “Santa Claus Aa Rahe Hai” and “The Same Water Everywhere” were good to read, but “Foreign Culture” seemed a bit like a filler arrangement– something that he wrote because he wanted a nice round number of essays in his book. Incidentally, Foreign Culture might just be the only essay among the ten where it seems the author actually had a holiday, so you can’t help but feel happy for him and his toddy induced stupor.

My absolute favourite essay in the book, was “The Taste Of Sugar”. Perur undertakes a Wari, the traditional walking pilgrimage to Pandarpur. It is not often that you come across a piece of writing which balances being insightful and being side-splittingly funny with as much grace as this essay.


In all, I cannot recommend If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai enough. Read it for the places he's travelled to, but more importantly, read it for the people he's travelled with.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel books are often a compendium of clichés. If the ‘when to go’ / ‘how to reach’ concerns are ever transcended, it is the ‘majestic beauty of the mountains’ or the ‘vastness of the ocean’ that is tritely commented upon, apparently granting solace to the writer who is trying to escape the ‘hustle bustle’ of a megalopolis. As if confronting the picturesque to escape the hectic life was all there was to travel. If the book in question is sufficiently post-modern in conception, it will make a big deal of the virtues of traveling solo, of backpacking on budget, and so on. Indeed, travel as an exercise in self-discovery is a hip notion these days. But the fact ignored is that the seemingly simple problems of ‘knowing oneself’ or ‘coming to oneself’ or ‘being at peace with oneself’ are lifelong metaphysical projects whose essence cannot be delivered in toto over a two week trip to Ladakh.

Travel, in and of itself, will not ‘save us.’ In fact, if indeed it does provide something akin to solace and leads to a superior understanding of the self, then precisely because such deliverances aren’t permanent, because life as it is must be returned to, travelling can become an imprisoning habit, making larger liberations difficult because of the tastings of smaller gratifications.

Thus it is problematic to conceive travel as that which leads to self enhancement, and perhaps better to return to the less attractive idea of travel as an exercise in knowing the outer world. If the traveller believes that knowing the world has a value in and of itself, that subjecting herself to the objective world as it exists is a worthwhile activity, then travel can be said to be approached in the right spirit. And if, in the process of assimilating realities that were hitherto unseen, her self-consciousness does experience an expansion, then all the good.

One travel book that belittles clichés and stays clear of any dogma, recent or modern, about the virtues of travel, is Srinath Perur’s ‘If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India.’ The book, published in 2014, is a collection of ten essays, detailing travels undertaken by the author with ten unique groups of people. The groups are mostly composed of Indians, and most travels are in India. Perur travels to Tamilnadu’s temples in buses full of retired government servants, to Europe with a desi group, to Uzbekistan with a group of sex tourists, to Pandarpur on a pilgrimage called Wari, and so on. The essays are mostly journalistic, so that the tone can be wry in the face of absurdity, or reverent in the face of piety. Perur narrates as someone who observes precisely to the degree that invites reflection. On the rare occasions that Perur tells us what he felt in a given scenario, he has the good sense to break through the ironic veneer, so that what is delivered seems like zen wisdom.

Recommended.

[Gorab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full on entertainiment!

A travelogue on ten conducted tours with different Indian groups:
1. Tamil temples package
2. Europe famous spots
3. Deserts of Rajasthan
4. Kerala backwaters
5. Sex starved tourists for Uzbekistan
6. Slum tourism of Mumbai
7. Journeys with Meaning tour of North East
8. Musical trail of Kabir through MP-Rajasthan-Gujarat-UP-Pakistan
9. Village life innovations through Madhya Pradesh
10. Traditional Wari walk of Maharasthra

Written in an ironic and funny way, the places explored in the book are equally good to the persons explored through it!
The parts I enjoyed the most were the author's retrospect on some of the tours - detailing on the people's motive and mindset during the tour, in contrast to the observed aftereffects and how they fared in life in a few years.

Very much recommended.

[Santhosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm guilty of initially judging this book as just a quick summary of touristy group tours the author had gone on (and was trying to make a quick buck with a book in the currently "in" subject of travel). As the 10 chapters show, the canvas is more colourful, the subjects even more varied, and I'm delighted to be proved wrong.

1) “The Grace of God” is a temple hopping tour across Tamil Nadu with retired government servants
2) “Saare Jahaan Se Accha”, is an escorted Europe tour with a Desi group
3) “Desert Knowledge, Camel College” is a conducted tour of Rajasthan with a camel safari
4) “Foreign Culture” is a cruise through the backwaters of Kerala with a small group of foreigners
5) “Memorial For The Victims Of Repression” is a conducted sex tour to Uzbekistan among a group of repressed Indian men
6) “Santa Claus Aa Rahe Hai” is a slum-porn tour of Dharavi
7) “According to Their Own Genius” is a freewheeling tour of Assam and Meghalaya
8) “The Same Water Everywhere” is a Kabir Yatra with folk musicians across Rajasthan
9) “Real India” is about a walking tour of villages in Madhya Pradesh looking for local innovations and meeting people
10) “The Taste Of Sugar”. Perur undertakes a Wari, the ancient walking pilgrimage to Pandarpur

Group escorted tours are the bread and butter of India's tourism industry and operators spend hours in carefully designing the itinerary and the inclusions, jamming in as much as possible to ensure the best paisa vasool for the customer. Ironically, conducted tours are also looked down as a very touristy thing that those travelling on them just want to check off - it's just not travel! And yet, as this book shows, there are more reasons for travelling and it's not always about seeing sights and having local experiences. It's also about wearing clothes you usually can't, being with your spouse away from your joint family, being in a place where you're not being judged, or taking that "first trip as a couple in 25 years of marriage" (which I think is a psychological validation of having finished their 'responsibilities' and so can now indulge themselves this once).

Perur is brilliant in being that proverbial fly on the wall, observing without passing judgement, remarking with amazing wit and insight, often turning his gaze inwards when looking out at the places he's travelling and the people he's travelling with. The diversity in the tours means that there's enormous variety in both the experiences and in the travel companions, entertaining and enlightening us with anecdotes, personal stories, and perspectives. While the book is a delightful travelogue, it's also thus a charming sociological portrait of India and her people.

[Rajat Ubhaykar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A most delightful travelogue. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

[Komal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book about the India I (know) love. It's written with so much of affection, dignity, frustration, and irreverence, that it makes for a very nostalgic, hilarious, and heartwarming read.

"what essentially amounts to devotional pub-hopping : roaring from temple town to temple town in a comfortable bus, buying fifty-rupee tickets to beat the queues, and paying quick obeisance at a couple of the more important shrines in the temple complex" - is an accurate summary of all my excursions from school.

Bonus points for the mention of the problematic yet popular phenomenon that is poverty tourism.

[Em*Greedy* (Iniya) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my usual kind of book, I decided to read it since I was not able to read my usuals...

There were 10 travels made by the author, I liked the way the author narrated the travels in different angles based on the tourists who accompanied, but by the time the 10th(the Yatra one) rolled out, guess I got tired...

[Nanditha · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are times you hear a lot about a book, read hundreds of reviews and then buy a book. Other times you religiously follow an author and buy a book because you love his/her work so much. And there are the odd times when you randomly chance upon a book and buy it, wanting to give it a shot and find yourself pleasantly surprised that you love it so much - which is what happened with "If It's Monday..." by Srinath Perur.

The book chronicles ten conducted tours that the author had been a part of. These cover places ranging from European cities and Uzbekistan to Dharavi, Tamil Nadu and Cherrapunji. What I absolutely loved about this book is how Perur manages to make this book fun, funny, and observational as well. Keeping the language simple, Perur manages to give us good insights into people's/tourists' habits and the places he visits, while choosing a range of different kinds of tours all at the same time. Ranging from pilgrimages to wildlife safaris and sex tourism, there is a lot we learn about the different kinds of tourism available these days as well.

Simple yet insightful, funny, and spot on with observations - Perur is one of those rare writers who manages to keep the writing fresh and devoid of unnecessary flowery language which puts me off. He has definitely earned a fan with this book.

[Viju · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ten chapters of ten 'conducted' tours that the author went on. At least eight of those were an enjoyable read and a few in those were thought-provoking too.

Off late, I've developed a liking towards travelogues by younger authors (Samanth Subramaniam, Haroon Khalid and now Srinath Perur). Perhaps, I related to them better?

[Vivek KuRa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first half of the book more than the second. Last few dragged-out chapters did not fit the travelogue category . But still worth reading if you love travelogues in India or outside India by an Indian.

[Sairam Krishnan · Rating 3 out of 5]

My travel book binge this year continues with Srinath Perur’s first, a collection of travelogues about traveling in groups, and I must say that I didn’t come to it with any great expectations. And the first piece in the book sort-of confirmed that for me. I found the writing very ordinary, the observations obvious, and didn’t feel the need to read more.

But I persisted, and felt the book grow on me. It took me a while to get used to the fact that the travel part in Perur’s book is not about the places themselves but the people he was traveling with. This is difficult for a reader like me to take, because place as an idea is so important to me. And that is why we read travelogues, to get that sense of place writing can paint and evoke. Just that this is a different kind of book.

Enjoyable it certainly became; as we go on to Uzbekistan and Aditya Chopra’s Europe, you smile and laugh at the travelers and their quirks. You know them so well, you know what they are going to do, yet you enjoy it.
Though I can’t for the life of me imagine going on a conducted tour to a hill station.

Perur’s writing is understated. It doesn’t shout or gather attention to itself; it’s just there. He’s a very good storyteller, but I still believe that some more depth in the pieces would have made them more substance. There are several places in the book when he gives you that little nudge, that little push that makes you pause and smile.

But in the end the book is essentially about who we Indians are and become as we travel, as we leave the comfort and familiarity of places we know, and venture out, together. We reveal ourselves to be sometimes obnoxious, sometimes carefree, sometimes irritating, sometimes plain stupid, but always interesting travelers. 

We’re a complex, layered people, but the fact that so many of us choose to travel with others says something about us. Like when in a bus in Europe, we play Antakshari, and always, always sing Saare Jahan se Accha.

[Vaishnavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel books. Are they a thing now that most of the travel we're getting is between our living and bed rooms? If you're open to group tours and even more open to the humour that's innate to escorted group tours, I wholeheartedly recommend Srinath Perur's "If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India."⠀

Ten different places in its ten different chapters. Perur touches upon the quirks of his co-passengers as well as their different reasons for embarking upon conducted tours. In this process, there are occasions for jokes and introspection as the oneness of human nature hits you. Through this journey, I also started to realize that conducted tours are the bread and butter of India's tourism industry as operators spend hours in carefully designing the itinerary jamming in as much as possible to ensure the best bang for the buck/paisa vasool experience for the customer. ⠀

I first came to Europe through a conducted tour many years ago with my family and some memories that have stuck with me include: Chanting 'Hanuman Chalisa' each time we got onto the bus to ensure a safe journey, eating Dal Chawal on the Swiss Alps, and being chased away buy Pisa's shopkeepers for bargaining. And, this book encapsulated my bizarre memories from that trip beautifully. The diversity in the tours as well as the people he's travelling with bring character and entertainment to his stories. While the book stays true to being a "delightful travelogue," it is also a great primer portrait of India and her people. ⠀

Recommended.

[Preethi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kinda had high expectations from this book, after having read Ghachar Ghochar, which the author translated. I knew what to expect in terms of language, narration and literature, and I am very pleased that this expectation is met.
Even when the author is talking about the idiosyncrasies of Indians traveling in groups in Europe, or the sex tourists to Uzbek or about the Shodh Yatra, he maintains a tone of impassive observation, which I liked. Its like here is there, in the moment, and observing it all.

I am also terribly impressed with the author, and his travels across. Book or no book, it takes a certain kind of a traveler to take trips like the ones he listed. And thats very impressive.

What is also good is the amount of information I gathered via this book. Right from the fact that Uzbek is also what it is, to the Yatra, or the music festivals in Rajasthan, or the eco tourism in the NorthEast... this book is full of information for that traveler to India who is looking for new experiences... If you want to travel India looking for an authentic Indian experience which is beyond pching-at-Dharavi, sun-bathing in Goa and massages in Kerala, then this book is for you.

[E.T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember that the first travelogue I read was Among the Believers : An Islamic Journey by V.S. Naipaul to read a first-hand account of life in Islamic countries. Am a reluctant traveler but I keep picking up a travelogue now and then by famous authors like Theroux, Iyer and others. Almost all those authors had very sharp observation skills and secondly, they all travelled alone. In that sense, this book by Srinath Perur is different from them all and kudos to him for that.
Travelogue based on conducted tours ??? Did I read it correctly ? The 10 conducted tours were different and the author has managed to turn something as mundane and seemingly boring as bus-trips into very entertaining and insightful episodes. The writing style and vocabulary is just right - not superficial and not pretentious, but the author puts across his views honestly and humbly.
The chapters on the first 6-7 tours were too good and this seemed to be heading for a 5/5 rating. Worth a read.

[N Kalyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very unusual travel book and a delightful read. It takes you places where you don't normally go and makes you see what you normally don't see. You will certainly learn a lot, also laugh a lot. Highly recommended.

[vaishnavi Suresh · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
Coming from a family that LOVES travelling(specifically road trips) albeit, not in the whole conducted tour sense but usually done with such military like precision having our days packed with things to do and places to see from 5am to at least 9pm on each day, I found a lot to relate to and appreciate in this book. Our author Srinath Perur has a really funny but non judgemental style of writing that tends to just describe people as they are, which was honestly quite refreshing to read. Just as it's said in the book, travel is just as much about people as it is about places and we could really see this sentiment throughout the book. Each chapter showed a different kind of tour with a completely different group of people with each person having their own complex reasons having lead them to the specific place in that moment of time. Like seriously, we got chapters about a sex tour in Uzbekistan, pilgrim tours in Tamil Nadu,slum tours through Dharavi,a Wari walk(the traditional pilgrimage to Pandarpur in Maharashtra)and a camel ride tour across Jaisalmer, all in the same book and written with a level of simplicity but also nuance?!!(yeah i don't get how that works either) that really made me think about this book long after reading it's chapters.
And even though things seem to be getting increasingly grim these days with everything going on, reading this really made me feel good and reminded me of what it was like to travel around. With travelling not being possible for so many months prior and also in the near future, I feel like reading this book at this time was a great decision! Overall even though this review seems all over the place, I had a great time with this and can't recommend it enough!!
(I was initially forced into reading a chapter of this by my brother but I can see why now lol. I've already convinced 2 of my friends to pick it up too!)

[Priyanka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book from a second hand book store on a sultry Kerala morning. Standing in the little shop with sweat dripping off my face, I leafed through this book and came across a passage about Kerala and its backwaters. Standing in Kerala's book market, it immediately hit home. He made some statement about how tourists look at Kerala's backwaters with awe and someone who has probably lived all their lives in the tropics could not possibly digest the awe. I found it hilarious because very often I am caught by surprise when people praise my hometown too.

This is the first travelogue that I've read and I've enjoyed it immensely. Srinath Perur talks about his experiences in various conducted tours. The travelogue is a mix of places, his experiences and the collective experiences and idiosyncrasies of the group. It's humours and very well written. From his tour of Tamil nadu, Kerala, to Europe, sex tourism of Uzbekistaan, then the slums of Dharavi, to the eco tourism of the North East, the music tour with folk artists and his experiences of a pilgrimage in Maharashtra, it covered a whole lot of things and all kinds of people.

The book is intelligent and humorous. Would definitely recommend a read.

[Akhilesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful, funny, and smart book covering ten "conducted" tours of the author within and outside India. I'm thankful to Big J for recommending this book at the time that they did since I was traveling a fair bit at the time and I could relate to so much that the author was describing.

Until the late 2000s, traveling in India was different from how it is in the rest of the world. People booked "conducted" tours where a group of people is bunched together in a set route with a set list of things to see. Most conducted tours also consisted mostly of middle-aged or older people who set off to finally explore their own country after having completed their fair share of responsibilities (raising children and retiring from their jobs). The author goes on set of such conducted tours and each such tour has funny, profound, and eye-opening experiences that I got engrossed in. Some of the experiences were very familiar while others were learning experiences.

The author's grip on the English language is extremely tight and their story-telling skills are masterful. This book was a delight to read and I look forward to reading more of their work.

[Harsha Raghuram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breezy, unique and insightful.

[Nayana Setty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my secret Santa gift. I enjoyed reading this a lot. Never did I felt bored reading this with healthy mix of details of people and places.

[Viswajith Venugopal · Rating 4 out of 5]

As advertised in the jacket, this is, indeed, a delightful travelogue!

It's about 'conducted tours' -- that is, a group package tour where people reserve their spots, and are shepherded around from place to place by a guide. So you're with random people, and all your arrangements are taken care of, and you usually end up saving a lot on food, accommodation and tickets to places. I've personally been on one such tour -- a fifteen day-tour across 10 European countries -- and when Perur (I happened to meet him recently, which is how I came across this book) told me what this book was about, I was surprised. I always thought conducted tours were a kind of lazy tourism, not for the serious traveller, and definitely not for the serious travel writer. But Perur addresses this in the intro, and sells it well: through a conducted tour, you see new places, and meet new people, and through the resulting interactions, they shed light on each other, and you learn something about both.

Of course, this requires some deftness to pull off, and Perur doesn't come up short. The book is very well-written -- it's lively with some nice language, yet easy to read. Also, it's full of witty insights -- I laughed out loud a lot (especially in the Europe story, because I could relate to some of the stuff he described).

Of course, what ultimately matters in a travel book is how interesting the places are, and there's a nice eclectic selection here. (It's themed around India -- the tours are either in India, or outside India with an Indian group.) There was some variation in how much I liked different stories, but this is likely subjective. (For instance, I thought the story about a pilgrimage walk in Maharashtra was sly draggy, while I really enjoyed the account of the guided tour in Meghalaya -- so much so that it made me want to go there someday, likely on a similar tour.)

Definitely worth reading if you're Indian and like travelling (or even the idea of it). Not very heavy or long either.

[Arathi Mohan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took my armchair travelling to new heights. Ten different places in its ten chapters- I could not have asked for more. The writer starts off on the usual temple tour of Tamil Nadu with a group of retired Government servants, then rides camels across Jaisalmer with people his own age and then undertakes the customary Kerala trip, sharing a houseboat ride with foreigners and taking an unexpected dip in the backwaters. He also embarks on more unorthodox tours - slum tourism in Dharavi, sex tourism in Uzbekistan, music tourism with the Kabir Yatra in Rajasthan, and so on. The chapter on Shodh Yatra, a week-long walking tour of villages in search of traditional knowledge and local innovations, brings one closer to the Real India (which is also the name of said chapter). Walking through the living root bridges of Shillong, some of his co-travellers, who are disillusioned with life, find new meaning and renewed enthusiasm. The last chapter, The Taste of Sugar, ends on a poignant note. This is a common thread through all the ten journeys. The author touches upon the quirks of his co-passengers and their different reasons for embarking upon conducted tours- ranging from the usual "to get away from it all" to the more unusual "to cope with the sudden demise of loved ones" and "first trip as a couple in 22 years of marriage". In doing so, there are occasions for jokes in many places, which will leave a smile on your face, but in the end, you will also see the oneness of human nature, whether it be an Indian tourist in Germany or an American tourist in a house-boat in the Kerala backwaters.

[Uttara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a fantastic read. I was drawn to the title because I am from Madurai. The book was super well-written. I liked that the author was not being a snob, especially in Europe, when he writes about things that bind them all together and makes observations about people that are funny, but really does not come across as an elitist rant. It could have been very easy to slip into a mocking judgemental story about the lack of sophistication among fellow travelers, the kind that you would hear being regaled in offices, but the author does not do this. I found this tendency to accept people as they are a common theme throughout the book, which makes him an incredible storyteller. This is really difficult to do especially when you don't grow up with people whom you meet in the tours and you would start sounding like Shoba De.

I loved the Europe part and the part about the Waris. For a person who loathes traveling, I have always wondered how people go through the Yatras especially the ones that involve a lot of walking. It was really interesting to grasp this idea from the variety of colorful characters in the chapter.

I highly recommend this!

[Parvathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love travel books, mostly for describing experiences I would normally never have - Thubron’s travels in Siberia, Rory Stewart walking across Afghanistan, Theroux travelling through China. This one is different. Perur describes Indians on package tours - a South Indian temple one, a European one, the camel tour in Jaisalmer, the free form Meghalaya tour, the Kettuvellam Kerala tour. They are things I have done or heard of people who have (ok, maybe not the Uzbekistan sex tour). They are deeply familiar, and yet Perur manages to find the absurd, the illogical, sometimes ludicrous moments in them. Some of the essays are outrageously funny, some are eye opening (have lived in Mumbai for most of my life, yet had never heard of the Wari Yatra). All have a deep vein of affection and empathy running through them. We are like this only, Perur seems to say. As a quirky portrait of a people seen through the lens of travel, this book is a winner.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up on a whim but it was really interesting--the author, a young writer from Bangalore, accompanies various tour groups within India and in Europe. Unlike most travel writing, he's focused primarily on the travellers. His insightful observations and interesting perspectives make for fascinating reading.

[Dayanand Prabhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why would a hardcore traveler defy his usual itinerary and travel in organized groups? Srinath Perur answers just that question by taking 10 conducted tours with Indians in various Places. This book is a masterpiece and will definitely be called a classic in the years to come.

[Amruta Bhave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! I was already a fan of Perur after reading his English translation of Ghachar-Ghochar, but after reading this travelogue, I can't wait to read more of his gems!

The topic of this book is actually quite uncommon. Perur describes his experiences while traveling, not alone or with family/friends, but with conducted groups through different travel companies. His journeys (and sojourns) take him to Europe, Uzbekistan, Kerala, Rajasthan, Meghalaya, Pandharpur, and several other places on the face of this earth. And he describes each of these places really interestingly. Conducted tours are indeed the ethos of Indian culture, and never have I ever read such insightful descriptions of not just the places and their cultures, but the mentalities of people traversing them!

The book had me in splits while reading about the "foren" (foreign) tours, and made me sigh and think while reading about the less commercial ones.
The only chapter I felt disconnected with was the one about Rajasthan Kabir Sangeet Yatra, and from what I read, that pretty much echoes the sentiments of Perur's while he was on that Yatra.

Highly recommend this book to anyone who loves reading, travelling, and reflecting on the cultural landscape (and portraits, pun totally intended) of India.

[Arunaa (IG: rebelbooksta) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book! I love it. Hilarious & informative. Tongue-in-cheek writing, man's deadpan humor got me throwing back my head laughing. 🤣 Srinath's 'epiphanies' on every conducted tour are crazy. Special respects for his various rendezvous and thanks so much for sharing the stories with us. Totally candid. Loved the travelogue so much! More please!

5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 read hands down!

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[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fun read and each itinerary is very interesting.
I think I will revisit this book for either armchair traveling or real traveling . Totally new itenary suggestions were the kabir festival as well as north east travel. The Uzbekistan travel was a surprise info for me .

What I wish : if there was an female author who had written this from a single lady traveling, it would have been amazing , esp in the case of the wari .

Overall this is indeed one of the fun read travelogues.

I had attempted to read another book by the author where he is the English translator of a Kannada book. I DNFed it . So I was pleasantly surprised at this book . I guess his strength is travelogues

I am gonna tag this book for book with non patriarchal society. It mentions briefly about the matriarchal customs of the north eastern communities PSC 2022

[Jasdeep Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book. Srinath takes all kind of group trips. Temples in Tamilnadu, backwaters in Kerala, Shodh yatra in rural MP. Northeast and he explains who are the people taking those trips and why they were doing it. Really liked passages on Kabir project, Slum tour and young people thinking to quit jobs on North East tour.
Recommended if you are planning to travel inside India or to Uzbekistan :)