Summary of the Book
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. Itravel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. - Robert Louis Stevenson in Travels with a donkey
Few of us have the panache to put in our papers, free ourselves from our papers,free ourseleves from our
desks, and take offon a half-year-long trip along the coastal necklace of peninsular India.This richly-flavelogue combines adventure, serendipity, food, and sheer joie de vivre. The narrative irresistibly draws us in as benevolent observers of the many facets and foibles of humanity. Living out of a backpack,in budget loadings, and eating bananas as a staple, only add to the heady challenges that stimulate the spirit of wanderlust of this maverick-explorer.
The tour diary, starting from the remote north-western coastal tip and climaxing, rather precariously, way above sea-level at the potentially sinister Indo-Tibetan border, is an engrossing chronocle of discoveries about the teeming millions of India. Thrown in for good measure, in a refreshingly tongue-in-cheek style, are recipes for some of the gastronomic delights offered in the places traversed. Itinerant sidelights about people of all classes and creeds-fishermen, seafarers, rickshaw-drivers, priests, salesmen, radicals, typical and atypical families, and all the rest - create a colourful kalaidescope that is quintessentially India. This book is as enjoyable and energising as a good cup of chai...