Travelers' Tales India: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides) [Paperback]

James O'Reilly (Editor), Larry Habegger (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Travelers' Tales Guides | Publication Date: January 14, 2004

This popular book in the Travelers’ Tales Destination Series weaves a tapestry of sensory images, profound transformations, and compelling history about a land that has lured and puzzled travelers for centuries and continues to do so today. Now in a new edition, Travelers' Tales India includes 49 stories and dozens of sidebar anecdotes covering the sprawling canvas of the country, from the high Himalayas to the dense jungles teeming with wildlife, to the chaotic inner cities and deceptively slow-paced villages. Among the stories: Jan Haag participates in a traditional Indian wedding, noted chef Madhur Jaffrey feasts on food for body and soul, Jonah Blank encounters the caretakers of the dead on the Ganges, William Dalrymple penetrates the mysteries of the Sufi masters, and David Yeadon takes a bath with 15 million people.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"O'Reilly and Habegger have assembled a marvelous and quite diverse selection of stories on India."

Product Details

• Paperback: 518 pages
• Publisher: Travelers' Tales; 2nd edition (January 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932361014
• ISBN-13: 978-1932361018
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #471,619 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I grew up in Minnesota in a family of seven children, all boys until the last one. After graduating from Dartmouth College I began to travel (I wished I'd been doing it while in college!) and found that writing about my experiences helped me understand the places and cultures I was encountering. I also discovered that newspaper and magazine editors responded as well, and that's how I got started working as a freelance writer. Not long after that I hooked up with James O'Reilly to write a series of mystery serials for the San Francisco Examiner, one of which ran for 104 episodes over five months. We then began writing travel stories together and in 1985 started a syndicated column, World Travel Watch, that has appeared in newspapers in five countries. In 1993 we founded Travelers' Tales with James's brother Tim O'Reilly, and since then we've published some 100 books. I teach workshops on the art and craft of the personal travel story on a regular basis: for information go to LarryHabegger.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars launching point for learning about India or planning a trip to India, October 7, 2006

By 

Robert Reid (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Travelers' Tales India: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)

I'm giving this book five stars not because the individual travel stories comprising this are five star stories (though many of them are), but because the breadth of subject matter and perspectives this book offers are remarkable. From the frosty passes of the Himalayas to the bustling streets of Calcutta, from the Ganges to shores of Goa, from the rarely-visited tribal interior to the even more desolate Rann of Kutch, this book portrays a country with a topography perhaps as diverse as Europe's. From the barriers of caste to the oppression of women, this book portrays a social evolution still in progress but with roots in ancient times.

Highlights for me included Rory Nugent's eccentric search for the supposedly extinct pink-headed duck, and David Yeadon's brilliant portrayal of character interactions (including an Indian interrupting his narrative digression in real time "Sir, are you hearing me, sir?"). For every traveler that timidly scratched the surface of India without real discovery (such as a particularly uptight and sheltered Oxford Fellow's first trip) there was one so recklessly bold that you're glad you could relive the experience from the safety of your own home (including one author's visit to a tribal island where past visitors had been killed). Somewhere in the middle there's bound to be powerful inspiration for a trip of one's own.

Reading this book was not only satisfying, but served as a launching point for future reading of the complete works from which these tales were excerpted (David Yeadon's Back of the Beyond and Jonah Blank's Arrow of the Blue Skinned God seemed particularly interesting to me).

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vicariously experience the best and worst of India, July 22, 2004

By 

Catherine Decker (Riverside, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Travelers' Tales India: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)

I read this book after reading the DK guide to India and Leila Hadley?s A Journey with Elsa Cloud (the latter is about a tour of parts of India in the 70s). This excellent collection of true stories really made all the places come alive and gave me a much richer and fuller sense of India than I could get from just Hadley?s book. The poverty, sexism, and daily encounters with excrement that are a part of life in India are compellingly conveyed at the same time as we come to feel the vast heavy weight of so many centuries of history, so much spiritual questing, so much diminished glory. Since I finished the book, I have found myself repeating stories to friends from the excerpts from Rory Nugent?s The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck and from Mark Shand?s Travels on My Elephant, which were particularly vivid and fascinating to me. There are a suprising number of tales featuring cyclists--evidently India is a popular place to tour by bike.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TRAVELERS' TALES INDIA, October 13, 2008

By 

Ruby M. Kidd "NW girls love to read" (Bainbridge Island) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Travelers' Tales India: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)

This is a delightful, easy read by many authors on India and their travel experiences. I found it interesting to hear these tales and dive into their wild mix of stories. India is a multi layered, historical and moving place to travel. Most of my books on India are by Indian authors so the insight from foreign travelers was a different 'read' and of value. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in or wants to travel to India.