‘Remember the old road, The steep stony path That took us up from Rajpur, Toiling and sweating And grumbling at the climb, But enjoying it all the same...’ From ‘Remember the Old Road’ by Ruskin Bond
Sometimes, a journey can be of discovery. And, in this compilation, Ruskin Bond has discovered hair-raising stories of other people’s journeys, taken many many years ago. Bond describes the old track from Rajpur to Mussorie, surrounded by Oak trees and colonial buildings in ‘The Kipling Road’. Braving blizzards and bandits, M. Huc takes a momentous journey to Ladakh in ‘Journey to the Forbidden City’, while Osa Johnson, the only woman adventurer in the book, gives her awe-inspiring account of cannibals in ‘A Woman Among Cannibals’. Be it travelling for shikar or search for new lands or just for survival, this book is packed with action!
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.