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Travelers' Tales India: True Stories
India is among the most difficult—and most rewarding—of places to travel. Some have said India stands for "I’ll Never Do It Again." Many more are drawn back time after time because India is the best show on earth, the best bazaar of human experiences that can be visited in a lifetime. India dissolves ideas about what it means to be alive, and its people give new meaning to compassion, perseverance, ingenuity, and friendship. India—monsoon and marigold, dung and dust, colors and corpses, smoke and ash, snow and endless myth—is a cruel, unrelenting place of ineffable sweetness. Much like life itself. Journey to the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the world’s biggest party, with David Yeadon and take "A Bath for Fifteen Million People"; greet the monsoon with Alexancer Frater where the Indian and Pacific Oceans meet; track the endangered Indian One-Horned Rhinoceros through the jungles of Assam with Larry Habegger; encounter the anguish of the caste system with Steve Coll; discover the eternal power of the "monument of love," the Taj Mahal, with Jonah Blank; and much more.
- GenresTravelIndiaNonfiction
518 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
About the author
James O'Reilly
66 books3 followersJames O'Reilly has been a traveler since infancy, and a storyteller almost as long. Born in Oxford, England, in 1953, he savors the early memory of walking as a five-year-old boy across the tarmac at Shannon Airport in Ireland and gazing up at the huge triple tails of the now-defunct Constellation aircraft. The smell of fuel and Irish fog and the amazing sight above him must have made a deep impression because he's been traveling willy-nilly ever since. After emigrating from Ireland to the United States, he grew up in San Francisco, where he was schooled by Jesuits, nuns and assorted yogis and eccentrics in the '60s. His eclectic education was formed as much by growing up in a large Roman Catholic family where he was the second of seven children as it was by being an omnivorous reader who was studying Eastern religion and meditation by his early teens. He traveled a great deal with his family - to Ireland, England, Scotland, and Canada - before heading off to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where, among other things, he spent a semester in Salamanca, Spain.
At Dartmouth, James met his good friend Larry Habegger, with whom he has collaborated since 1982 on projects ranging from radio shows to mystery serials, newspaper and magazine columns to world adventure travel. Since 1985, O'Reilly and Habegger have co-authored the nationally-syndicated travel column "World Travel Watch." In 1993, they co-founded the publishing company Travelers' Tales with James's brother Tim, and have since worked on more than 100 books together, winning many awards for excellence, including the prestigious Lowell Thomas award for outstanding travel book. James has been an active member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) since 1990, and is a former board member of the Tibet Information Network.
James has visited over forty countries and lived in four. Among his favorite travel memories are visiting headhunters in Borneo, rafting the legendary Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, enjoying a meal cooked by blowtorch in Tibet, and hanging out laundry with nuns in Florence. He has made traveling with his own family a priority, and together he and his wife and three daughters have roamed all over Europe. He lives in Palo Alto, California, where he is usually conspiring to be somewhere else.
At Dartmouth, James met his good friend Larry Habegger, with whom he has collaborated since 1982 on projects ranging from radio shows to mystery serials, newspaper and magazine columns to world adventure travel. Since 1985, O'Reilly and Habegger have co-authored the nationally-syndicated travel column "World Travel Watch." In 1993, they co-founded the publishing company Travelers' Tales with James's brother Tim, and have since worked on more than 100 books together, winning many awards for excellence, including the prestigious Lowell Thomas award for outstanding travel book. James has been an active member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) since 1990, and is a former board member of the Tibet Information Network.
James has visited over forty countries and lived in four. Among his favorite travel memories are visiting headhunters in Borneo, rafting the legendary Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, enjoying a meal cooked by blowtorch in Tibet, and hanging out laundry with nuns in Florence. He has made traveling with his own family a priority, and together he and his wife and three daughters have roamed all over Europe. He lives in Palo Alto, California, where he is usually conspiring to be somewhere else.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 31, 2012
India has long been a 'get there someday' destination for me. Every time I see the country depicted in film or on t.v. its beauty and diversity grab my attention and I start thinking about moving 'someday' a little further up the agenda. It was after seeing a particularly effective ad campaign on the Discovery channel that I bought this book, the idea being that if I couldn't get to India right away, a little armchair travel might work as a temporary salve.
The Travelers' Tales series has been a favorite of mine for years. I've read several destination volumes (Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil) and each one has been full of interesting and unique tales from exotic lands. What I like about the series, in particular, is that they shy away from actual tourist and visitor information. These are not guidebooks. Instead, they focus on re-creating the atmosphere of the location and the sense of wonder and discovery inherent in all travel. And while there is a little firsthand research scattered throughout the volume, they are generally used as footnotes to help explain the truly exotic.
With all that in mind, I started reading Travelers' Tales India.
The book is divided into five main sections: The Essence of India, Some Things to Do, Going Your Own Way, In the Shadows, and The Last Word. The intent of the first two sections is fairly self-explanatory. The third, Going Your Own Way, features stories of those who got off the beaten path, those who went out into the lesser travelled areas or on their own to find unique paths through the subcontinent. The fourth, In the Shadows, is, well, the dark side of the country. Stories here tell of the times travelers got into trouble or maybe were just found by it. And the last section, The Last Word, is just that, an epigram.
What all of these sections have in common is skillful editing and passage selection that create atmosphere and vivid impressions of a place I've never been but would love to see. Even while the fourth section might have me rethinking some things, the first and second sections provide so many ideas for an itinerary, so many perspectives on what I might see and what I might do that planning a journey becomes almost inevitable while reading.
I don't know when I'll make it to India. But I know that when I do, I'll read through this book again and I'll look at my notes and maybe be just slightly better prepared for having done so.
The Travelers' Tales series has been a favorite of mine for years. I've read several destination volumes (Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil) and each one has been full of interesting and unique tales from exotic lands. What I like about the series, in particular, is that they shy away from actual tourist and visitor information. These are not guidebooks. Instead, they focus on re-creating the atmosphere of the location and the sense of wonder and discovery inherent in all travel. And while there is a little firsthand research scattered throughout the volume, they are generally used as footnotes to help explain the truly exotic.
With all that in mind, I started reading Travelers' Tales India.
The book is divided into five main sections: The Essence of India, Some Things to Do, Going Your Own Way, In the Shadows, and The Last Word. The intent of the first two sections is fairly self-explanatory. The third, Going Your Own Way, features stories of those who got off the beaten path, those who went out into the lesser travelled areas or on their own to find unique paths through the subcontinent. The fourth, In the Shadows, is, well, the dark side of the country. Stories here tell of the times travelers got into trouble or maybe were just found by it. And the last section, The Last Word, is just that, an epigram.
What all of these sections have in common is skillful editing and passage selection that create atmosphere and vivid impressions of a place I've never been but would love to see. Even while the fourth section might have me rethinking some things, the first and second sections provide so many ideas for an itinerary, so many perspectives on what I might see and what I might do that planning a journey becomes almost inevitable while reading.
I don't know when I'll make it to India. But I know that when I do, I'll read through this book again and I'll look at my notes and maybe be just slightly better prepared for having done so.
August 12, 2023
Varied in content & rich in detail. Accounts by various travellers (including some accomplished authors) are interesting & bring out the splendours, as well as the sorrows of India. There is an innate honesty common to most of the writing which makes this an engaging read. I would have preferred if there if dates were ascribed to these travelogues, as it could be sometimes misleading about the travel logistics in India (much improved than mentioned).
May 18, 2009
What a wonderful collection of stories that spans cities all over India. This is definitely a suggested reading for someone traveling to India.
I've read many books and stories set in India, but I was amazed by what was yet to be covered. I'm so happy I read these stories because my eyes have been opened to more places I want to see in India and ways in which to travel - by bike - in a truck on the Grand Trunk Road - and more. Further, it's been awhile since I've read a book that I've really enjoyed and looked forward to getting back to after putting it down.
This series, of which there are collections written for a number of cities, countries, and regions, is a collection of touching, informative, and inspiring stories. I will go back to stories in this book and I will absolutely go back to this series for other locations - whether or not I ever travel there. Who knows - this series could inspire me to travel to a location I'd never would have otherwise considered.
I've read many books and stories set in India, but I was amazed by what was yet to be covered. I'm so happy I read these stories because my eyes have been opened to more places I want to see in India and ways in which to travel - by bike - in a truck on the Grand Trunk Road - and more. Further, it's been awhile since I've read a book that I've really enjoyed and looked forward to getting back to after putting it down.
This series, of which there are collections written for a number of cities, countries, and regions, is a collection of touching, informative, and inspiring stories. I will go back to stories in this book and I will absolutely go back to this series for other locations - whether or not I ever travel there. Who knows - this series could inspire me to travel to a location I'd never would have otherwise considered.
March 4, 2012
A gift from my husband for Valentine's Day (he knows me well!), I thoroughly enjoyed this series of travel essays set all over India. The writers, settings, geography, and topics were all wildly different. India is a dazzlingly varied country, in terms of everything--food, language, culture, tradition, religion, etc. These essays really ran the gamut of all these different areas. I wish I could even begin to describe them and do them justice. Let's see, there was an essay on chai (an entire essay about just chai! And it was interesting!), on food, on eunuchs, on weddings, on the Buddha, on truck drivers, on cycling across India, on the difficulties of traveling in India as a westerner, etc. etc. etc. I'm only scratching the surface.
For anyone with any interest in India, this is a winner.
For anyone with any interest in India, this is a winner.
January 28, 2010
A real mixed bag of first-person accounts of visiting India. Mostly well-written with a couple of exceptions. Some interesting to me, some less so.
June 7, 2020
This collection of factual stories and accounts of experiences of India is truly multi-faceted and a true gem! I am loving it.
I would especially recommend this compendium to any Indian who is living outside of India, and who has some fondness for Indian culture, traditions and history and just wants to understand their Indian heritage. I was born and spent my childhood in countries outside of India, and have also spent many adult years outside the country. But the decade I've spent there has been priceless, and the stories in this collection are adding to my knowledge of a country I have my roots in. As many first generation Indians growing outside of that land knows, one's Indian-ness is hard to lose...parents and community dictates to us to behave in certain ways. Rebelling, we try to be different. But then we see acceptance of tattoos, yoga, ayurveda, vegetarian diets, kurtis, curries vedas, monkey and elephant gods becoming mainstream, and we're like, hey, there's something to this mysticism that's me. I'm open to learning more about my heritage. In short, this compendium helps decipher our roots and helps validate us in some strange way.
Madhur Jaffrey, Salman Rushdie...some big names have contributed to this collection. Hobson-Jobson? I would never have guessed.
Enjoy.
I would especially recommend this compendium to any Indian who is living outside of India, and who has some fondness for Indian culture, traditions and history and just wants to understand their Indian heritage. I was born and spent my childhood in countries outside of India, and have also spent many adult years outside the country. But the decade I've spent there has been priceless, and the stories in this collection are adding to my knowledge of a country I have my roots in. As many first generation Indians growing outside of that land knows, one's Indian-ness is hard to lose...parents and community dictates to us to behave in certain ways. Rebelling, we try to be different. But then we see acceptance of tattoos, yoga, ayurveda, vegetarian diets, kurtis, curries vedas, monkey and elephant gods becoming mainstream, and we're like, hey, there's something to this mysticism that's me. I'm open to learning more about my heritage. In short, this compendium helps decipher our roots and helps validate us in some strange way.
Madhur Jaffrey, Salman Rushdie...some big names have contributed to this collection. Hobson-Jobson? I would never have guessed.
Enjoy.
June 27, 2017
Facinating stories given a wide range of views of India from many unique Western travelers
January 4, 2019
Great variety of fascinating articles.
October 11, 2020
This is a dazzling collection of true stories, that I felt actually let me understand the core nature of my own people in a new light
September 10, 2014
Short essays and excerpts, both from tourists and Indians, about India. I like the premise (it's sold as a guidebook, but instead of giving hotel recs or train schedules, it tries to give a sense of culture and history) but the execution isn't really succeeding for me. I was particularly annoyed by this person (speculating on why she's been invited to a wedding while her traveling companion wasn't):
"I never did get quite clear on his reasoning. It might have been that he was unmarried, and, therefore, mustn't go to a wedding; or that he, a Pakistani, was in India somewhat illegally, and, therefore, musn't be seen at anything so public as a wedding; or that it was unseemly for a strange man to go to a wedding, but not for a strange woman; or that he, as a Muslim, musn't look upon a woman who was a bride."
OH MY GOD IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE WHITE COME ON THIS ISN'T THAT HARD. Look, I, as a white woman, have also been invited to random Indian weddings by strangers, but I'm not under the delusion that it's because people were so overwhelmed by my sparkling personality that they really wanted my individual, personal attendance so we could stare at each other and fail to speak the same language. This author (Jan Haag, whoever she is) is later surprised when she comes across an archaeological excavation by literally wandering in off of the street and for some unknowable reason they don't want her to volunteer to work with them.
Her third essay (because the book definitely need three essays from this woman) included this paragraph:
I wondered -- I wonder still -- why I didn't just let myself die. Not sadly, or for any reason or lack of reason, but simply because I didn't know where to go or what to do. I had no interest whatsoever in living. Indeed, one night when a funeral procession, carrying candles and branches, came walking along the road and out across the river bed, I found myself quite envying the corpse, draped, as it was, on a bier of wood, decorated all around with withered palm fronds that rattled in the wind.
Note that this is literally the next sentence after she saw a doctor who told her she only had diarrhea and just needed water and electrolytes. HOW IS ANYONE THIS OBLIVIOUS? She then went on to disdain "novels" and "detective stories" as having "almost nothing to do with the spirit, less to do with literature", because obviously she only reads German literature about someone who pretends to have TB because that's DEEP AND MEANINGFUL.
Okay. Anyway. There were plenty of perfectly nice essays in this book, including ones by Salman Rushdie, Madhur Jaffrey, and William Dalrymple, all of whom I like enough to have read entire books by. It's a bit outdated (apparently it was put together in 1995, which I did not realize before reading it), but plenty of the essays are still applicable. In general, the idea was better than the execution.
"I never did get quite clear on his reasoning. It might have been that he was unmarried, and, therefore, mustn't go to a wedding; or that he, a Pakistani, was in India somewhat illegally, and, therefore, musn't be seen at anything so public as a wedding; or that it was unseemly for a strange man to go to a wedding, but not for a strange woman; or that he, as a Muslim, musn't look upon a woman who was a bride."
OH MY GOD IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE WHITE COME ON THIS ISN'T THAT HARD. Look, I, as a white woman, have also been invited to random Indian weddings by strangers, but I'm not under the delusion that it's because people were so overwhelmed by my sparkling personality that they really wanted my individual, personal attendance so we could stare at each other and fail to speak the same language. This author (Jan Haag, whoever she is) is later surprised when she comes across an archaeological excavation by literally wandering in off of the street and for some unknowable reason they don't want her to volunteer to work with them.
Her third essay (because the book definitely need three essays from this woman) included this paragraph:
I wondered -- I wonder still -- why I didn't just let myself die. Not sadly, or for any reason or lack of reason, but simply because I didn't know where to go or what to do. I had no interest whatsoever in living. Indeed, one night when a funeral procession, carrying candles and branches, came walking along the road and out across the river bed, I found myself quite envying the corpse, draped, as it was, on a bier of wood, decorated all around with withered palm fronds that rattled in the wind.
Note that this is literally the next sentence after she saw a doctor who told her she only had diarrhea and just needed water and electrolytes. HOW IS ANYONE THIS OBLIVIOUS? She then went on to disdain "novels" and "detective stories" as having "almost nothing to do with the spirit, less to do with literature", because obviously she only reads German literature about someone who pretends to have TB because that's DEEP AND MEANINGFUL.
Okay. Anyway. There were plenty of perfectly nice essays in this book, including ones by Salman Rushdie, Madhur Jaffrey, and William Dalrymple, all of whom I like enough to have read entire books by. It's a bit outdated (apparently it was put together in 1995, which I did not realize before reading it), but plenty of the essays are still applicable. In general, the idea was better than the execution.
April 30, 2008
Lots of selections from larger works. Many of them very interesting. Sometime I might try to read some of the books in which the selections were originally published by the number is overwhelming. My favorite part of the book was the little random notes on the margins of every few pages. Even if you just skimmed it for the notes it would give you a sense of the variety of experiences in India.
December 3, 2012
A collection of essays by various travel writers. I've been reading this off and on since February I think. It both inspires and scares me about going to India, which I think means it does a pretty good job of giving a wide ranging picture of the country. :)
November 17, 2012
I'm loving the info it's giving me about this wonderful and chaotic country. I'm reading it in random order, so who knows really how much of it I've gone through so far, but it can't be more than 10%.
June 18, 2014
Phenomenal stories, nearly all of them unusually absorbing and with rich detail. Delightfully, and some times painfully, personal. Highly recommended to anyone who likes travelogues or is interested in East Indian culture and people.
February 28, 2017
They take short travelogues, weave them together with quick informational paragraphs and quotations from hither and thither, and present a great mosaic of India. Across this varied and colorful country, its people, it's climates and geography. It's so wonderfully varied that it never bores.
March 7, 2008
some interesting stories, but the short story format keeps them all shallow. if you are interested in india, it is worth picking up, otherwise, don't bother
June 16, 2009
The Introduction to this book is only 2.5 pages long and is the most accurate description of India that I have ever read. Interesting perspectives from an colorful bevy of travelers.
January 1, 2010
Excellent, easy background reading for anyone visiting India
March 20, 2012
Excellent stories and story telling. I learnt a lot of details about India where I will be visiting for the first time at the end of March.
June 19, 2011
I have the 1995 edition, wonderful. The best book on India I have read
July 30, 2011
The intro to "The Dharma of Heli-Skiing" by Peter Shelton is cool. Besides that, I don't really remember much of this book. Fun to read, though.
January 25, 2012
This is a collection of essays about India, each one beautifully written. Now I want to go off and read the books from which the essays were drawn. I learned a lot from this book.
June 9, 2009
A great collection from various writers who have braved the sub-continent.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews