Tag Archives: Travel

In My Hands Today…

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Three Quarters Of A Footprint: Travels In South India – Joe Roberts

For five months Joe Roberts was a guest of the Trivedi family in their flat in Bangalore’s Baghpur Extension.

Major Trivedi, a military Brahmin, was given to reciting quatrains of Nostradamus; Atul, his 18-year-old son, was more concerned with Guns n’ Roses; while Mrs Trivedi, with her neighbour Mrs Sen, took charge of her visitor’s plans for travelling around Southern India.

Roberts journeyed to the jungle beyond Mysore – a jungle that, contrary to expectations, was only little trees and dappled glades; to the queen of the hill stations, Ootacamund, to which generations of English colonial officers had retreated, transforming an Indian plateau into a passable imitation of Bournemouth; and to Kovalam, which he visited in order to see the Kathakali dancers, but where he also found himself dining with an Australian pornographer. And he also travelled to Cochin, on the Malabar Coast, and shared a railway compartment with a drunken Bristolian who seemed unimpressed with everything but Indian moonshine.

But Roberts always returned to the ground-floor flat in Baghpur Extension, and to his friends the Trivedis. This is his account of his travels.

In My Hands Today…

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Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics – Tim Marshall

All leaders of nations are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas, and concrete. To understand world events, news organizations and other authorities often focus on people, ideas, and political movements, but without geography, we never have the full picture.

Now, seasoned journalist Tim Marshall examines Russia, China, the USA, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan and Korea, and Greenland and the Arctic — their weather, seas, mountains, rivers, deserts, and borders — to provide a context often missing from our political reportage: how the physical characteristics of these countries affect their strengths and vulnerabilities and the decisions made by their leaders.

In ten, up-to-date maps of each region, Marshall explains in clear and engaging prose the complex geo-political strategies of these key parts of the globe. What does it mean that Russia must have a navy, but also has frozen ports six months a year? How does this affect Putin’s treatment of Ukraine? How is China’s future constrained by its geography? Why will Europe never be united? Why will America never be invaded? Shining a light on the unavoidable physical realities that shape all of our aspirations and endeavors, Prisoners of Geography is the critical guide to one of the major (and most often overlooked) determining factors in world history.

In My Hands Today…

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Hot Tea Across India – Rishad Saam Mehta

On Rishad Saam Mehta’s journeys — and as a travel writer and all-round road-trip junkie, he’s been on many — there’s a particular thing he noticed. There’s not a highway, road or dirt track in India where you can’t find a cup of chai whenever you want it.

And with those cuppas come encounters and incidents that make travelling in India a fascinating adventure. In this riveting book, which includes stories of honey- and saffron-infused tea shared with a shepherd in Kashmir, and a strong brew that revives the author after almost getting lynched by an irate mob in Kerala, Rishad takes you across the length and breadth of India, from Manali to Munnar, from the Rann of Kutch to Khajuraho, with a wonderful combination of wit, sensitivity and insight.

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The Railway to Heaven: From the U.K. to Tibet on the longest and highest railways in the world – Matthew Woodward

Taking his long-distance train travels to a whole new level, Matthew Woodward embarks on an intrepid journey from his home in the UK to Lhasa in deepest Tibet, for many years closed to visitors.

Travelling over 20,000 kilometres on trains across Europe and Asia, he sets out to reach his objective via the little used Trans-Manchurian route across Siberia to Beijing, and from there to the Qinghai–Tibet railway across the Tibetan Plateau – the highest railway in the world.

Unprepared for what he is to experience in Lhasa, he discovers a city in modern-day China, but a place still largely living in the traditions of a truly mythical past.

Those that know Woodward’s writing will appreciate his honest and humorous reflections of life on the rails, and his efforts – sometimes successful – to decode cultural misunderstandings. He tells his story with thoughtfulness and introspection you’d expect of a solo traveller, and gives you the detail that makes an incredible journey like this feel possible for you, too.

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More Ketchup Than Salsa – Joe Cawley

Have you ever thought about making a new life abroad?

It was while holding aloft a not altogether pleasant-smelling mackerel that the decision was made. The March rain hammered on the rotting tin roof high above the market stall, where I had spent the last six months pushing out dubious trays of marine life at three for a fiver. After a two-week holiday in Tenerife, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, Joy and I vowed that a life in fish giblets was not going to be our destiny and a life in the sun, was.

A complete lack of catering experience, zero business acumen and the sum of our vastly wealth barely reaching waist level of a ceramic pig did little to deter our enthusiasm. “Where do we sign?” we replied. And then the whole silly, sunny saga began…” Joe Cawley

When Joe and his girlfriend Joy decide to trade in their life on a cold Lancashire fish market to run a bar in the Tenerife sunshine, they anticipate a paradise of sea, sand and siestas. Little did they expect their foreign fantasy to turn out to be about as exotic as a wet Monday morning.

Amidst a host of eccentric locals, homesickness and the occasional cockroach infestation, pint-pulling novices Joe and Joy struggle with the expat culture and learn that, although the skies might be bluer, the grass is definitely not always greener.

An hilarious travelogue exposing the wild and wacky characters of an expat community in a familiar holiday destination, More Ketchup than Salsa is full of humor and is a must-read travel memoir for anybody who has ever dreamed about moving abroad, finding a job overseas or even momentarily flirted with the idea of ‘doing a Shirley Valentine’ in these trying economic times.