Indian Takeaway: One Man’s Attempt to Cook His Way Home – Hardeep Singh Kohli
Hardeep Singh Kohli loves many things in life – but none more than food. He loves to eat it, he loves to cook it. So when he decided to travel around India, searching for his roots, what seemed the obvious thing to take with him? Will Hardeep find the India he is searching for through his recipe book? And will he find himself along the way?
Shadow of the Silk Road – Colin Thubron
Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch—in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel.
The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, Shadow of the Silk Road is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval.
One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron’s travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. Shadow of the Silk Road encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world’s discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment.
Great Australian Outback School Stories – Bill Marsh
If your teacher commuted to school in a plane; if you had to watch out for rogue bulls rather than traffic; if your daily pick-up was done by a horse – you probably went to an outback school.
This collection of more than sixty stories, gathered by Bill ′Swampy′ Marsh in his travels across Australia, perfectly captures the experience of life growing up in the outback. Whether you loved school or not, these stories will bring a smile to your face and maybe even a tear to your eye, as students and teachers alike share their yarns and memories of a time gone by.
…this little kid, he spun around at me and he snapped, ′Piss off, Miss.′
Of course, I immediately replied with, ′Excuse me. In this school we always use our best manners when we talk to teachers and adults. So what should we say, then?′
And this little kid, well, he looked up at me all sheepish and he said, ′Well then, Miss, piss off, PLEASE.′
A Journey in Ladakh: Encounters with Buddhism – Andrew Harvey
Now considered a classic among readers interested in Tibetan Buddhism and pilgrimages of the spirit of all kinds, A Journey in Ladakh is Andrew Harvey’s spiritual travelogue of his arduous journey to one of the most remote parts of the world–the highest, least populated region in India, cut off by snow for six months each year. Buddhists have meditated in the mountains of Ladakh since three centuries before Christ, and it is there that the purest form of Tibetan Buddhism is still practiced today.
Troubled Pilgrimage: Passage to Pakistan – Balwant Bhaneja
Troubled Pilgrimage: A Passage to Pakistan is about a journey by the author, a retired Canadian diplomat, who is visiting his ancestral land of Sindh and Punjab in Pakistan, the first visit since he was five. Bhaneja’s Hindu family had to leave their homeland following the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in August 1947.
The author’s journey begins at the Birla House in New Delhi, India where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist over sixty years ago, from where he travels into Pakistan during the troubled and violent spring of 2006. The reader is taken through bustling Islamabad, the back streets of the author’s birthplace Lahore, and to the more remote, and mysterious towns of Sukkur, Rohiri, and Shikarpur in Upper Sindh, the ancestral land from which he and his family were exiled. After revelations about his past, his nation and his people he returns to Delhi for an audience with the “Refugee” Prime Minister I.K. Gujral.
The trans-cultural narrative deals with the universal theme of displacement and how it impacts mind and psyche of those involved. It is a thoughtful work about how our multiple identities shape and get played out in a globalized world. What makes some to leave their homelands while others to stay on despite fears and uncertaint
Memories and Such 