Customer Reviews

Desert Places

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the most honest, earthy, exhilarating account of an expedition that I've ever come upon. In a sense, I've seen more of Rajasthan through Davidson's story than during my own brief treck into the Thar.

Ms Davidson is a tough woman, who for some reason sees the need to put herself into the most excrutiatingly isolating situations.

I found the book fascinating, and was overwhelmed at times by the sense of being so alone within a country where there is the most confronting closeness of human being with human being. This is an India I know i would not be equipped to deal with.

i was a bit critical of her at first that she always had her friend, the wealthy Indian upon whom to fall back, but I doubt whether she would have been able to approach completion of her task without him. The need to retreat every so often from the sheer hard grind of trying to accomplish the task she set herself. I know i would have had to find a 5 star, deep-bath resort long before Davidson welcomed the comfort of a barely basic hotel room with hot water!

The lives of the rabbari as presented to us through Davidson's eyes (and god knows they are hardly likely to be presented any other way!) is fascinating. I know the attraction of the 'exotic' can lead to patronising people, but davidson never does that, and does not allow her (dare i suggest, midle class, western, educated?) readership to get too comfortable with their own views of the world.

I spent 2 years in India in the late 90s and this book began making its' way around the ex-pat crowd in the middle of my stay there. The word of mouth reviews were universally positive. While most of us didn't go through the extreme day to day challenges Ms. Davidson put herself through, we went through enough to completely empathize with her plights. Her eloquent descriptions of the often unending and unyielding discomforts imposed by India while, at the same time, it also offered the visitor delights and experiences you can't find anywhere else was simply spot-on. I recommend this book to anyone who truly enjoys travels and the self-reflection afforded through trips that take them out of their comfort zones.

This is one of those rare travel books that not only enthrall you, but has the rare quality of making the reader burst out laughing. Some of what I find humorous maybe because I am Indian, and find Ms. Davidson's honesty very entertaining. She is a tough woman, who has done things which most middle class Indian cannot even dream of doing, and her views on the political situation in India, may be annoying to some arm chair revolutionaries, but are none the less true. Her India is as exotic as anything you will find in National Geographic, but her colors show more then yellow saffron crops and red dyed cotton scarves, it also show the filth of uncovered sewage.

This book is no dazzle-eyed account of the beauty and exoticism of India. Davidson writes beautifully about often ugly subjects; the harshness of the Rabari life, the pervasive corruption of Indian society, the squalor of rural poverty. She alternates between loving and hating India; admiring the tough spirit of the people she travels with; despairing of the rigid caste system that perpetuates inequality and injustice, heartsick of being stared at and followed and treated like an alien. This book is not always an easy read, but it is always fascinating, and you cannot help admire the indomitable spirit of its author.

I could not put this book down. Very thought provoking. An excellent read. A remarkable woman.

Robyn Davidson has again shown us a side of India that most of us hope we never experience!
. She demystifies the spiritual middle class allure of the glossy magazine articles, by travelling with a group of nomads across Rajasthan.

Despite the intense poverty, their untouchable caste and a daily routine that would flatten a tri-athlete, the loyalty, affection and warmth of the Raibiri people finally emerges.
Overwhelming corruption, overcrowding and cultural arrogance are portrayed in a refreshing style, that previews the Coca-colarisation of a unique culture.
Read it and weep.!

I read her first book "Tracks" (Australia) and enjoyed that book more but did enjoy reading about her adventures in India. Parts seemed slow and was not sure the whole purpose of her going to India except to test her own tenacity and experience life to its fullest- which I guess is enough reason. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys travel narratives and I probably would read another book of hers if she should go on another adventure.

`Desert Places` (1996) is Australian adventurer Robyn Davidson's second major travel book, her first being the better known Tracks (1980). She repeats a camel journey through the desert, but this time in Western India in the company of a nomadic people known as the Rabari. As usual, Davidison is full of lovable contradictions, sweet one moment and ready to kill en masse the next. Likewise her approach to the book takes a consciously anti-travel literature track, just about everything we associate with travel literature Davidson turns the tables. Or, at least she tries, but in the end it is still fundamentally part of the genre. For most readers, who are not conversant with the recent scholarly debates about travel literature (in relation to post-colonialism, post-modernism), the overall effect may be a little off-putting, with one New York Times critic interpreting Davidson's irreverence as "bad faith" (see NYT, "Chasing After Nomads", February 16, 1997, online). In the end I think Davidson succeeded in writing a good travel narrative, updated with politically correct concerns about the fate of traditional nomadic people under the homogenizing assault of globalization - but her overall attempt at breaking out of the genre into something 'greater' probably did not succeed. Still it is a fascinating look into what life is like for the Rabari, stripped of romanticism and from the perspective of women, and that makes it an important, unique and worthwhile journey.

THIS BOOK IS A SPELLBINDING ACCOUNT OF THE ADVETURES OF ROBYN OF HER THAR DESERT SOJOURN. HER OBSERVATIONS ARE CHARACTERISED BY AN AMAZING CANDOUR AND DEPTH. SHE HAS ALSO EXPLORED DEEPLY THE PSYCHE OF THE PEOPLE OF THAR WHO ARE LIVING BY THE MYTH OF BEING CREATED BY SHIVA. THERE ARE STORIES ALSO TO THE ORIGINATION OF THIS NOMADIC RABARI TRIBE.