November 2008 Desktop Calendar Wallpaper
This month’s calendar is the colorful doors of a monastery in Diskit, Nubra Valley, Ladakh.
Book Review: Himalaya
Author: Michael Palin
Publishers: Phoenix
Pages: 296
The unimaginatively named book is a journal of Michael Palin and his team along the Himalayan Mountains, shooting a documentary for BBC. Palin begins his journey from a nondescript location at Khyber Pass, a place where the armies have crossed over in search of rich loot in India from the days of Alexander, and more recently, British. The journey takes him through mountainous regions of Pakistan, Ladakh, Annapoorna Ranges, Tibet, Yunnan and other Himalayan provinces of China, Nagaland and Assam, Bhutan and concluding with Bangladesh where every drop of precipitation on these mountains drains into.
It’s indeed a long journey and eventful one as he meets the last members of the Kalash tribes, gets close to K2 and feels the high Himalayas from up-close, is humbled by the unforgiving weather as he treks through Annapoorna, lunches with ebullient nomads on the base of everest, and much more and more.
Palin’s experiences invoke a never-before jealousy in the mountain lover who is ever-dreaming of being in these less mundane locations. But for the BBC team, the going is not always easy. They are constantly on their tows, low on time and always having to keep moving and answering the call of the work before they can get a place sink into their minds and hearts. There are missed opportunities, cold weather and altitude sickness to worry about.
Even as Palin has a subject that can conquer the reader, his writing doesn’t shine as much as the mountains themselves. Written like a personal journal with lot of commentaries and humour thrown in once a while, the flow is not natural from page to page and the reader is left with a feeling that Palin could do more with the pen. Nevertheless the strength of the subject and a reasonable narration, put together with the variety that comes along the journey still makes it a worthy read, especially if you are some one who is always dreaming about the mountains.
Book Review: The Penguin Book of Indian Journeys
Compiled by Dom Moraes
Publishers: Penguin Books
Pages: 369
The Penguin Book of Indian Journeys, according to the description in the inside cover, is an anthology of travel writing on India. The image on the cover also gives similar impression. But once you start reading through the stories, it turns out that there isn’t much of travel element in some of the selected stories. Dom Moraes seems confused about what travel is, and tries to push his own perspective of travel to people who are looking to read romance of travel in the inner pages.
Some of these are weird if you try to put them as travel stories. There is one story about a journalist trying to understand infamous Bandit Veerappan, there is another journalist who follows Indira Gandhi and talks politics, and one more story is about rampant crime in Bihar. It is hard to understand what these stories are doing in a travel book. Moraes has tried to justify such stories in his introduction, but nothing convincing enough.
But to give some credit to the book, there are indeed some good write-ups that have gone into making the it. The well known names of Indian Travel Writing are all there – like Bill Aitken, Paul Theroux, Ruskin Bond and Stephen Alter. A story by Moraes himself, of exploring the tribes of Madhya Pradesh is an excellent read.
The good and unreadable are probably in equal numbers through the book. A what would have been a good book is spoiled by some unsuitable selections.