travelogue - Comfortably Numb

Book review: Travels in the Other Place by Pallavi Aiyar

There`s travel and then there`s travel…. Pallavi Aiyar`s book has no ambiguity about the subject at hand. A neat meld of memoir and travelogue, she takes us aboard her personal train, opens the compartment doors to us, tells us of trips into the land of Books, into the barren wastes of Illness, shows us how…

Book review: The Elsewhereans by Jeet Thayil

Tracing life`s trajectories Jeet Thayil`s new book begins and ends by the Muvattupuzha river. And so, let us go then, you and I, to that riverside, to meet Ammu who has an ancestral home there, Anniethottam. Let us meet George, the man Ammu weds, let us attend their hesitant courtship, their wedding where Gramsci`s theory…

Book review: Mad about Cuba by Ullekh NP

Notes from contemporary Cuba The only thing quirky about this book is the title. In actual fact, Mad about Cuba is a compact report from the field. The tagline informs you that the author is a Malayali revisiting the revolution. And the first pic on the front jacket is one familiar to most Malayalis: that…

Book review: The Amur River by Colin Thubron

The Amur River by Colin Thubron. Penguin Random House Books. Yet another wonderful travelogue by veteran travel writer Colin Thubron, the wow factor in this work is two-pronged. One of course, is his travel trajectory, the long and winding River Amur that flows between China and Russia. The other is the jaw-dropping fact that…

Book review: The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane. Penguin Books. Yet another classic I have come late to, this part travelogue, part meditation on life is a classic from a master writer. The book celebrates the act of walking down old paths, tracks, holloways, drove roads, water paths, across the British Isles, with detours in Ramallah and…

Book review: The Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle

BURMA CHRONICLES by Guy Delisle. Jonathan Cape Books. Sometimes – most times – I think I live for moments when I stumble across books that are absolute treasures. This graphic novel which I spied on my daughter`s bookshelf, and because it was about Myanmar nee Burma, I took home to read just blew me away….

Book review: Tripping by C K Meena

TRIPPING by CK Meena, e-book. Readers of CK Meena`s regular City Lights column of yore in The Hindu will need no introduction to her wry and witty observations on life. In Tripping, she has put all that humour to great use, resulting in many LOL moments for the reader. Tripping is a travelogue detailing a…

Book review: Handle with Care by Shreya Sen-Handley

Travels with the kids So, here comes a book that is something of a departure from others of its genre found on bookshelves today. This is a straight-up travelogue, one that falls back on tried and trusted tropes of travel writing: have an interesting place to go to. Tell of that visit in an interesting…

Book review: The Braided River by Samrat Choudhury

THE BRAIDED RIVER by Samrat Choudhury. HarperCollins Books, 2021. The Brahmaputra, says Samrat Choudhury, is not a canal. It does not flow between two neat banks. Its untidy braids, channels of history and commerce, witness to the ebb and flow of empires, are verily the architects of the surrounding landscape of nature and of humans….

Book review: Orienting, an Indian in japan by Pallavi Aiyar

Nippon under the lens Pallavi Aiyar, peripatetic traveller and charming chronicler of Things She Sees, delivers once again. Orienting is her Japan book, a montage she has collated for the edification of her readers, culled from her experiences in that country. It`s an easy read, filled with gently offered insights, where the things to be…