On the India Untravelled Facebook page, we asked YOU about the one book that inspired you to pack your bags and hit the road. Behold, 10 titles that should be on every traveller's book shelf!
1) THE STRANGE CASE OF BILLY BISWAS
by Arun Joshi
The story of a young, rich, American-educated Indian who ends up in the wilderness of central India, living as a semi-naked "tribal" seeking a meaning to things above and beyond than everyday civilization can provide.
~ Recommended by Shobha Raghavan
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2) THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES
by Che Guevara
Full of high drama and comedy, The Motorcycle Diaries is the story of a remarkable road journey in the words of a 23-year-old medical student known as "Che".
~ Recommended by Supreet Singh, Shobha Raghavan, Nandini Chatterjee
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3) AROUND INDIA IN 80 TRAINS
by Monisha Rajesh
Taking a page from Jules Verne's classic tale, Monisha Rajesh embarked on an adventure around India in eighty trains. Indian trains carry over twenty million passengers daily, plowing through cities, crawling past villages, climbing up mountains, and skimming along coasts. Monisha hopes that her journeys across India will lift the veil on a country that had become a stranger to her.
~ Recommended by Smile Pabby
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4) SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET
by Heinrich Harrer
Originally published in 1953, this adventure classic recounts Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer's 1943 escape from a British internment camp in India, his daring trek across the Himalayas, and his happy sojourn in Tibet, then, as now, a remote land little visited by foreigners.
~ Recommended by Ritika Ojha
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5) WILD
by Cheryl Strayed.
by Cheryl Strayed.
At age 26, following the death of her mother, divorce, and a run of reckless behavior, Cheryl Strayed found herself alone near the foot of the Pacific Crest Trail - inexperienced, over-equipped, and desperate to reclaim her life. Wild tracks Strayed's personal journey through California and Oregon, as she comes to terms with devastating loss and her unpredictable reactions to it.
~ Recommended by Piyush Patni
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6) INTO THE WILD
by Jon Krakauer
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.
~ Recommended by Supreet Singh
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7) FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN
by William Dalrymple
In 587AD, two monks set off on an extraordinary journey that would take them in an arc across the entire Byzantine world, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. More than a thousand years later, using Moschos's writings as his guide, William Dalrymple sets off to retrace their footsteps.
~ Recommended by Sameer Desai
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8) INVISIBLE CITIES
10) A STEP AWAY FROM PARADISE
by Italo Calvino
Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times.
~ Recommended by Amit Garg
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9) NORTH TO THE NIGHT
by Alvah Simon
In June 1994, Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come.
~ Recommended by LiDeb Hlondoli
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10) A STEP AWAY FROM PARADISE
by Thomas Shor
In the early 1960S, a Tibetan lama, a charismatic and learned visionary mystic named Tulshuk Lingpa, led over 300 followers into the high glaciers of the Himalayas in order to ‘open the way’ to a hidden land of immortality fabled in Tibetan tradition dating back at least to the 12th century. Fifty years later, Thomas K. Shor tracks down the surviving members of this visionary expedition and entwines their remarkable stories of faith and adventure with his own quest to discover the reality of this land known as Beyul.
~ Recommended by Ro Han
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What books have inspired you to travel?
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