Five Books to Read While Travelling in India
Some Excellent Books Every Traveller to India Should Read
Dec 17, 2008
There are hundreds and hundreds of books about India, but for a tourist or a traveller, the following five make both entertaining and educating reading. Most of them are written from the perspective of a foreigner trying to make sense of India, whereas Arundhati Roy's writings should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in contemporary India.
1. Sarah MacDonald: Holy Cow
After backpacking through India, Australian journalist Sarah MacDonald swore she would never return to the country. As she was leaving India, a palm reader at the airport predicted that she would return. Years later, her television reporter fiancée is posted to Delhi, and MacDonald follows him to live in India’s capital city. What follows is a funny and well-written account of her experiences of life in India as a foreign female, from being cursed by a holy man to travelling around the country and exploring India’s many religions.
2. Arundhati Roy: The God Of Small Things
This famous Indian novel situated in Kerala is a 1997 Booker Prize winner, and is written by one of India’s most internationally acclaimed writers and a well-known political activist. The lives of a sister and a brother are intertwined with Kerala’s Communist history and local traditions, as well as descriptions of Kerala’s tropical beauty that becomes a setting for a tragedy.
Worth reading is also The Cost Of Living, a book containing two essays by the same author.
3. Elisabeth Bumiller: May You Be The Mother Of A Hundred Sons
In her touching and often shocking book, Bumiller describes the incredible and tragic lives of Indian women she met while living in India in the 1980’s. She tells some of the stories behind newspaper headlines as she writes about dowry deaths, burning widows and villages where girl babies do not survive.
4. William Sutcliffe: Are You Experienced?
A very funny novel about a young, clueless and reluctant English backpacker, who travels to India because he fancies his best friend’s girlfriend. Things go very, very wrong in the way they could only go wrong in India, and as well as stories about dysentery and getting high, the book is filled with hilarious and accurate descriptions of India's backpacker scene.
5. Andrew Harvey: A Journey In Ladakh: Encounters With Buddhism
Even those who have never thought of visiting India’s northernmost area will want to go to Ladakh as soon as possible after reading this book. Harvey’s beautifully written book describes his journey through this remote mountainous region while he studies Tibetan Buddhism - a journey that is as much a physical journey as a spiritual one.
Further reading: anything by William Dalrymple or Mark Tully. Well-known travel writer William Dalrymple’s books about India are bestsellers, and former BBC correspondent Mark Tully has written several fascinating accounts about India.
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