Journeys: Tales of Travelers in South Asia
As another summer draws nearer, people start thinking about vacations and trips to India and other far-flung destinations. To set the mood, here are some book recommendations. You don’t need travel plans to enjoy these narratives, which will appeal just as much to armchair travelers.
Do you ever wish to have a change of scenery from your humdrum daily life? A yen to see, hear, and experience desi surroundings? An adventure that leads you to acquire an out-of-the-box point of view?
If so, buckle up. Jetting off to a new place, whether in India or elsewhere, one that opens your heart and mind and adds jest to your days, might be the answer.
“You can’t buy happiness,” experienced travelers have said, “but you can buy plane tickets, which is kind of the same thing.”
What if you’re not equipped to travel? Experts say, “The next best thing to taking off for a destination is reading about it.” Below you will find recommendations from avid readers, some of whom are authors and all of whom are travel enthusiasts.
Pico Iyer: An acclaimed essayist, travel writer, and novelist, Iyer’s numerous books have been translated into 23 languages. His Aflame: Learning from Silence was released earlier this year by Riverhead Books.
“One of the most brilliant works of travel and illumination I have read in recent years is This Divided Island by Samanth Subramanian,” Iyer says. “With his regular writings in The New Yorker and his biography of J.B.S. Haldane, Subramanian has long since established himself as a remarkably eloquent, incisive, and versatile writer, on place, on politics, even on science.
“But This Divided Island is a work like no other, taking us deep into the recent war in Sri Lanka and, more widely, into all the conflicts that have long rent that beautiful land. It is dazzlingly reported, captivatingly written, and is essential reading. I have taken it in three times already, and I am sure I will be returning to it many times over. Like the very best travel writing, it takes us into a particular place and topic—and into a larger, parable-like inquiry at the same time. It’s not about mere holidaymaking, but about how traveling to another land can transform your life and thinking. In that respect, it joins modern classics of reportage by other young writers from South Asia, most obviously Anjan Sundaram’s unforgettable and original Stringer and Basharat Peer’s heartbroken account of his divided Kashmir, Curfewed Night.”
Mukund Padmanabhan: A distinguished professor of philosophy at Krea University, India, and the former editor of two newspapers— The Hindu and The Hindu BusinessLine—he is the author The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked Over a Japanese Non-Invasion, published by Penguin Random House in India.
“The Tamils by Nirmala Lakshman is principally a book of history, but what sets it apart is her decision to write it in a multi-layered way,” Padmanabhan points out. “Her research took her beyond her desk and the archives, her history closely intertwined with her travel to a number of places in Tamilakam. Many passages in the book are made up of observations about such things as archaeological digs and temples and describe her encounters with people. These refreshing bits of travel writing breathes fresh life into her history, lending it a certain immediacy.
“I was moved enough by her descriptions of Kanchipuram and its surroundings to make a visit to Uthiramerur, to see a temple I had never visited before. I suspect someone interested in visiting the places that reveal the early history of Tamil Nadu, from the archaeological digs up to the medieval times, will find this book extremely useful. There are passages about lesser-known places—such as the Chola temple in Alanthurainathar—which are described in a manner that makes you want to visit them.”
Sandip Roy is a podcaster and contributing writer for numerous publications in India. His radio dispatches air on public radio in San Francisco and he’s the author of a novel titled Don’t Let Him Know, released by Bloomsbury Publishing.
“My selection is Video Nights in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer,” Roy says. “This is my introduction to reading about travel, which did not just transport me elsewhere but also taught me how to look at the world with wry wit. Iyer’s great gift was how he straddled East and West so effortlessly. It’s a classic piece of travel writing that showed me how you can be an outsider and yet have such fascinating insight into a place just because you know what to look for. I will always remember him saying how he would always go to a McDonald’s to see how they had tweaked the menu to match local cultural sensibilities. It was such a neat way of encapsulating both the power and limits of globalization.”
Recommended by Khabar: Six India-related travel narratives. They’re well written, entertaining, witty, and they all capture the chaos and charm of India without feeling dated. A few titles were published only in India, but those are also available for purchase online.
Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh. A British Indian author’s hectic solo rail journeys in various parts of the country are enlivened by fascinating observations and conversations with fellow passengers. Rajesh’s Around the World in 80 Trains is also enjoyable.
If It’s Monday, It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India by Srinath Perur. While he is mainly known as a translator, especially of Vivek Shanbhag’s Kannada novels, this frequently hilarious book on group tours in India shows that Perur is an adventurous traveler and raconteur as well.
Never Mind the Bullocks: One Girl’s 10,000 km Adventure around India in the World’s Cheapest Car by Vanessa Able. This British woman’s daring, never-boring journey in a Tata Nano lasted three months, taking her through crowded cities, wide highways, and dusty lanes. Nothing was more important than the horn when driving in India.
Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization by Namit Arora. This former U.S. resident’s 5,000-year historical journey is also an engaging travelogue that takes him to six famous sites: Harappan city of Dholavira, Nagajunakonda, Nalanda, Khajuraho, Vijayanagar, and Varanasi. Several ancient travelers are featured.
Chai Chai: Travels in Places Where You Stop but Never Get Off by Bishwanath Ghosh. He has written books on India’s big cities, but in this chatty, appealing travel narrative, Ghosh checks out the rail junctions that passengers are familiar with but seldom explore beyond the stations. Small-town India comes alive.
Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India by Pankaj Mishra. In the early years of globalization, before Mishra became an astute, well-regarded commentator on world affairs, he set out as a young man to explore India in this humorous and sometimes caustic travelogue. Reissued this year.
Bharti Kirchner: My own recommendation is Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel by Shahnaz Habib. A 2024 winner of the New American Voices Award, this book is at once a memoir and an erudite collection of essays. Not only are these essays dotted with historical references, but they’re readable and thought-provoking as well. Born in Kerala, Habib now makes her home in Brooklyn. Personal stories, such as that of her father and his aversion for travel, enrich the book. Habib also goes back to the origins of travel, talks about conventional travel narratives and how inadequate they are in view of the changing demographics of travel. She touches on colonialism and consumerism as they shape our movements. She raises fundamental questions such as: Who gets to travel, and who gets to write about the experience?
Bharti Kirchner is the author of nine novels, four cookbooks and hundreds of magazine pieces. An avid traveler, she has most recently written mystery novels set in Jaipur and the Andaman Islands. Kirchner lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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