India Books - Page 4

Frommer's South Korea (Frommer's Complete)

Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This brand new first edition of Frommer’s South Korea features in-depth coverage of this increasingly popular destination, from the cities of Seoul and Busar to the DMZ border area to Jeju Island, the "Island of the Gods." Our author Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee is a first-generation Korean American who passes along insider's tips and insights into Korean culture, plus a Korean recipe or two (Hae-Jin Lee is also a respected cook and cookbook author). She'll steer you away from the touristy and the inauthentic and show you the real heart of South Korea. Eat a Hanjeongsik (full-course meal) in a neighborhood cafe in Seoul, attend the Busar Film Festival, shop for the country's best fabrics (ramie fabrics) at the markets in Hansan, and hike the Seoraksan Mountains (or just buy the area's famous mushrooms and honey)--plus seek out tea houses, limestone caves, Buddhist temples, hot springs, battlegrounds, and parks throughout the region.

You’ll travel South Korea like a pro with our candid advice and handy Korean-language glossary. Also included are accurate regional and town maps, up-to-date advice on finding the best package deals, a glossary of Korean cuisine, and an online directory that makes trip-planning a snap!

 

Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh

Helena Norberg-Hodge

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The swiftly evolving socioeconomic life of Ladakh, whose people struggle to balance growth and technology with cultural values, offers crucial lessons in sustainable development. This gripping portrait of the western Himalayan land known as “Little Tibet” moves from the author’s first visit to idyllic, nonindustrial Ladakh in 1974 to the present, tracking profound changes as the region was opened to foreign tourists, Western goods and technologies, and pressures for economic growth. These changes in turn brought generational conflict, unemployment, inflation, environmental damage, and threats to the traditional way of life.
Appalled by these negative impacts, the author helped establish the Ladakh Project (later renamed the International Society for Ecology and Culture) to seek sustainable solutions that preserve cultural integrity and environmental health, while addressing the Ladakhis’ hunger for modernization. This model undertaking effectively combines educational programs for all social levels with the design, demonstration, and promotion of appropriate technologies such as solar heating and small-scale hydro power.
Examining how modernization changes the way people live and think, Norberg-Hodge challenges us to redefine our concepts of “development” and “progress.” Above all, Ancient Futures stresses the need to carry traditional wisdom into the future—our urgent task as a global community.

Central Asia (Lonely Planet Travel Guides)

Bradley Mayhew

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent guide to central asia 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Once again Lonely Planet has done a very good job. This guide is the best introduction to the five Central Asian countries. I used it in Tajikistan recently and intend to use it again.

Editorial Review:

Discover Central Asia

Lose yourself among the blue domes and mosaics of the Registan in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Play Marco Polo, exploring Silk Road forts while bathed in the light of the snowcapped Hindu Kush in the Wakhan Valley, Tajikistan.
Watch a Kyrgyz eagle hunter in action and taste the delights of fermented mare's milk in Kyrgyzstan.
Follow in the footsteps of British spies, Chinese pilgrims and Russian explorers and embark on your own Great Game.

In This Guide:

Five authors, five 'stans, 27 visa stamps (78 visa checks), 182 pots of green tea, one (short) detention by the KGB.
Everything you need to know about visas, travel permits and crossing Asia's remotest borders.
Trek into remote alpine valleys, follow herders on horseback or ride camels with our new Activities chapter.
Visit lonelyplanet.com for up-to-the-minute reviews, updates and traveler suggestions.

The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (Oxford India Paperbacks)

Jim Corbett

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Adventures dont get better than this. 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Corbett is a natural writer and combines his knowledge of the jungle with uncanny hunting skills to give us one of the best Indian adventures ever written.

Reading his books is not just following a maneater with a gun - it is a journey into the days of the British Raj where you will be transported into the remote jungles of Northern India, read about the simple people and their unsophisticated lifestyle. There are no villians, no suspicious characters lurking around and nobody to provide humour. You just have village folk trying to eke out a living which is sometimes interrupted by a feline with a taste for humans.

This particular book is about one leopard which terrorised a large region for many years and claimed about 420 lives. To understand what these people must have felt, it must be noted that in those days there were no high security fences, no guns or any kind of technology to track the leopard. Yet the people had to enter the forest to earn their daily bread. There is an unforgettable chapter in the book titled 'Terror' which starts something like this:

'During the day, people went about their lives as usual. Trade and commerce, transport and all other transactions went about their normal way. But as evening approached, there was a marked change in their behaviour. Pilgrims rushed towards their night shelters, businessmen closed shops abruptly and people scurried towards their homes for relative safety. No curfew was more strictly imposed. No orders to remain indoors were observed as faithfully.'

This is one of the books which shows that for writing adventure you don't need weapons or FBI investigations. All you need is a writer with a big heart who loves what he is doing and knows what he is talking about.

Editorial Review:

Most of Jim Corbett's books contain collections of stories that recount adventures tracking and shooting man-eaters in the Indian Himalaya. This volume, however, consists of a single story, often considered the most exciting of all Corbett's jungle tales. He gives a carefully-detailed account of a notorious leopard that terrorized life in the hills of the colonial United Provinces. This story represents Corbett's most sustained and unique effort.

Delhi, Agra and Jaipur (Eyewitness Travel Guide)

DK Publishing

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

great pictures, but lacks detail 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This might be a great book if you are in the process of considering a trip to India. It is a good overview. However, if you know exactly where you will be traveling, pick up a more detailed guide for that area. I did like all the color pictures.

Excellent Guide if you like the style 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

It's tough to pick the "best" guidebook for a particular destination, and the proliferation of free travel information on the web makes choosing "the one" even tougher. My wife and I always start with a copy of an EyeWitness guide for the destination: there are pictures on every page, and we find the images help us plan our trip: the guides are particularly good for architecture and art. The practical guides in the back cover currency, hotels and restaurants.

This guide to Dehli, Agra and Jaipur is a particularly good example of the DK offerings: the images, paper, text, all are up to the high standards of other books in the series.

Having written that, there is really only one page that matters in deciding whether to buy: the newer the better. This book appeared first in 2000 and my wife and I used that edition two years ago on our trip to North West India. It was substantially revised in 2007 so be sure you check the copyright page before buying. If you like the Eyewitness series and have any interest in the destinations, armchair or on the ground, your decision is made.

Whatever guidebook you decide on, consider adding a copy of The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow (Little Book) to your baggage. It's in the style of Eyewitness Travel Guide to Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, and delightful and educational as well.

Robert C. Ross 2007 2008

Note: DK maintains an excellent website with updates on many of its guidebooks.

City of Joy

Dominique Lapierre

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

STORY OF THE UNBREAKABLE HUMAN SPIRIT 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 16 people found this review helpful.

No other book I had ever read has ever made me more proud about the fact that I am an Indian or importantly, a human being. The moving story, that the author claims is based on facts is probably based on a true one. What is truly remarkable though, is the fact that this is probably not an unusual story or for that matter even an uncommon one! It happens, more so in India that anywhere else, despite 200 years of British rule the Western had not been able to take from these people what they prize most, their dignity. People trying to live a decent life, who hope to live with at least an ounce of self-respect going to great extremes to attain it.

It doesn't surprise me to know this today, nor does it surprise me to know it took so long for the world to know this. What amazes me is that so many Indians have written such bad reviews about this book. It seems ironic that a book that tells a story about the majority of Indians who are uneducated is not appreciated by the minority that are. It makes sense though. This book doesn't directly attempt to glorify India's culture, its traditions or values. Instead it speaks about the bitter realities of a ghetto that almost all educated Indians with a modern outlook likes to pretend don't exist. These are the people that Westerners mostly interact with, these are the people who want to impress India to the rest of the world, and the truths in this book are not what they would think is impressive. It still impressive none the less. In fact it is more than impressive that even at the lowest of low of economic degradation a man can still try to live a life of dignity - the kind that every human being deserves to live with.

IF AFTER READING THIS BOOK YOU SHED A TEAR, either of joy or sorrow, GO TO THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE MOST AND TELL THEM HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THEM, thank them for who they are and after that thank God for the beauty that is your life and lastly thank yourself because you are a wonderful human-being.

Editorial Review:

Living in the seeming hell of one of the poorest and most crowded quarters of Calcutta are the saints of today: saints such as Mother Teresa, saints such as Stephen Kovalski, an unkown Polish Catholic priest who made his home there to care for the poorest of the poor. And Max Loeb, an American physician dedicated to fighting disease in this dirty hellhole. City of Joy, the story of these saints, is a testament to the human spirit unbowed by the most wretched of circumstances.

A Blue Hand: The Tragicomic, Mind-Altering Odyssey of Allen Ginsberg, a Holy Fool, a Lost Muse, a Dharma Bum, and His Prickly Bride in India

Deborah Baker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A Jewish Poet in India 4 out of 5 stars.
20 of 20 people found this review helpful.

During the 1970s there were the punks, during the 1960s there were the hippies, and during the 1950s, and beyond, the Beatniks were the epitome of America's counterculture. Normally from respectable, if not wealthy families, and highly educated to boot, the Beatniks frightened conservative, Eisenhower era America with there drug use, displays of both hetero and homo sexualities, and willingness to embrace other counterculture figures as Dr. Timothy Leary. However, it was not only conservative America that gave the Beats an overblown image, those who supported them, those who read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and wanted to be the next Sal Paradise beatified instead of demonized their idols, and the true personalities of the Beats were hidden behind a wall of media and hype.

In the past few decades a large number of biographies and autobiographies about and by the Beats making one think is Deborah Baker's A Blue Hand: The Beats in India really necessary? I must say that, yes, it is necessary because it sheds light on a subject, which, of course, has been written on before, that is usually only given a chapter or a few footnotes in comparison to the Beats and sex or the Beats and Drugs: The Beats and spirituality/religion.

Although the book is titled A Blue Hand: The Beats in India, it might be more properly titled: A Blue Hand: Allen Ginsberg and The Beats in India because most of the book is centered upon the balding, heavily bearded poet who changed the American literary scene with his poem Howl in 1957 with the hoopla it caused along with the obscenity trial following its publication. Instead of being described as an icon or a demon, Ginsberg is shown as a man who is trapped in the memories of his mother, who died after going insane, and his Jewish upbringing which he is unable to extricate from his mind and being. After having God read aloud to him a poem by William Blake and others deities coming to him in various stages of chemically induced transcendence, Ginsberg becomes obsessed with finding a teacher whom can help him obtain Enlightenment, so therefore India becomes his Mecca and along with his longtime, and eventually lifetime lover and partner, Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg goes to India to search for his guru.

However, things do not go as Ginsberg hoped. He wanted to find Enlightenment on his terms, i.e. being able to find it quickly and through the copious use of drugs. A number of the self-styled gurus he encounters are obviously charlatans who are trying to make a quick buck off of white folks and those whom possess true knowledge are bemused by the presence of the American poet with his thick glasses and beard because what he seemingly seeks is not true enlightenment, but release from personal demons and an easy reason to delve into questionable substances.
Ginsberg is an Orientalist who has exoticized a country and its people to help him seek things that he believes that he cannot find in his own culture. Instead of enlightenment, what he truly finds in India is a group of poets, like him, mostly highly educated and from well off families, who seek to leave their own county to find philosophies that they believe their own country and its "backward" ways lack, so therefore it is a meeting of Orientalist and Occidentalist, a meeting that results in disappointment.

With Ginsberg as the core of her book, Baker does an impressive job sketching how other Beats fit around the prominent poet. Although arguably the most famous, especially for his road novels, Jack Kerouac seems to be the biggest homebody, reluctant to leave his mother, William S. Burroughs, with his decades of drug use, love of firearms, and considerable talent and intellect, comes off as a collected psychotic, and Gary Snyder, who went to Japan to find his enlightenment through Zen Buddhism, seems to be the polar opposite of Ginsberg, a man who is willing to take the time to truly learn the religion he studies while becoming enmeshed within his adopted society.

At first, I thought A Blue Hand was going to be a simple biography of the Beats in India, but instead it, through Baker's through research of both primary and secondary materials, it is a literary biography in which she details the thoughts and feelings of not only the Beats, but the women in their lives and the teachers and Indian poets they encounter. This style was a bit disorienting at first for me because I am not used to reading books structured this way and I was a bit put off from reading it at first, but as I continued reading I was able to get drawn into the "story" and able to thoroughly enjoy the book. However, I did also have a couple of issues with the book, primarily there were just too many names. If one is not familiar with some of the lesser known beats and the slew of Indian poets Ginsberg meets, one can be quite at a loss while reading this book. While there is a semblance of endnotes at the end of the book which tells where Baker found her information, footnotes would have been a major help to distinguish who was who in the book. Besides that, the book gets a bit repetitive at times, such as mentioning Ginsberg's poetry spouting God several times, but that is a small matter which does not cast a shadow over the whole of the book.

Editorial Review:

In this engrossing new piece of Beat history, Pulitzer Prize finalist Deborah Baker takes us back to the moment when America’s edgiest writers looked to India for answers as India looked to the West. It was 1961 when Allen Ginsberg left New York by boat for Bombay, where he hoped to meet poets Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger. Baker follows Ginsberg and his companions as they travel from ashram to opium den. Exposing an overlooked chapter of the literary past, A Blue Hand will delight all those who continue to cherish the frenzied creativity of the Beats.

Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus

Robert D. Kaplan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent writer for travel, not politics 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I thought this book was written beautifully and I can see why Kaplan has such a large following. However, like other reviewers, I found his opinions on politics rather excessive. He seems to think that "one size fits all" and perhaps misunderstands that the American way is not the way for everyone else.
The travelling and the characters are all excellantly described, but I think he focussed too much on his own political analysis. Also as an avid reader, I thought it profoundly odd when he (himself a journalist) critised members of the Azerbejani press as "impolite" for asking difficult questions to the authorities. I think that this has validified other writers opinions that I have read on the American media, claiming that large sections of the "liberal" press are becoming mute and embedded with the powers that be, gaining "access" which is so vital there.
My only other problem with this book was Kaplans coverage of the occupied territories in Palestine. The way it was described, one would think that there were no human rights abuses and that not even potential conflict was on the horizon.
Other than these observations, I found Kaplans travel writing to be exquisite. His trips east of the Balkans opened up worlds to me that are rarely conveyed through other mediums such as TV, Radio etc. I had known about the wars in the Caucuses, but Kaplan rightly highlights the international press' apathy to this region as opposed to the Balkans, which at the time was a lesser conflict.
All said, a good read which I would give 3.5 stars...if I could

Editorial Review:

Eastward to Tartary, Robert Kaplan's first book to focus on a single region since his bestselling Balkan Ghosts, introduces readers to an explosive and little-known part of the world destined to become a tinderbox of the future.

Kaplan takes us on a spellbinding journey into the heart of a volatile region, stretching from Hungary and Romania to the far shores of the oil-rich Caspian Sea. Through dramatic stories of unforgettable characters, Kaplan illuminates the tragic history of this unstable area that he describes as the new fault line between East and West. He ventures from Turkey, Syria, and Israel to the turbulent countries of the Caucasus, from the newly rich city of Baku to the deserts of Turkmenistan and the killing fields of Armenia. The result is must reading for anyone concerned about the state of our world in the decades to come.

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle

Dervla Murphy

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Bittersweet 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Murphy's humor, tenacity and bravery are awe inspiring. She's attacked by wolves (or possibly wild dogs), wakes up in a tent after going to sleep out in the open, fends off an attempted rapist and has many other thrilling adventures. In one instance, when there are nefarious characters about, she is advised to booby trap her inn bedroom's doorway with empty bottles. In her journal, she calmly notes that emptying bottles is the one thing she's really good at.

I couldn't help feeling sad while reading this book. In 1965, when this book was published, most people were probably unfamiliar places like Kabul and Jalalabad. Now, of course, in the wake of the post-9/11 bombing of Afghanistan, Kabul is a household word. Turns out, that city was once breathtakingly beautiful, as well as the country around it. Murphy's trek takes her through Afghanistan at a time when the USSR and the US were vying for control of this country. The Russians were busy providing electricity and importing goods, while the Americans seemed to approach this ancient country with the intent to raze the traditional culture to the ground and replace it with a modern one. One wonders if, if both countries had never meddled with Afghanistan, there might never have been the Taliban? In any event, this book takes the reader back to a truly relevant experience of the not-so distant past.

The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon (Oxford India Paperbacks)

Jim Corbett

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Words cant describe my respect for this man 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Once again in this book Jim Corbett has proved it, he was a awesome incredible gentleman. I have never seen anyone who could write like him. Amazing man with amazing courage. His modesty is revealed throughout his book. He goes through so much suffering and pain, but never once writes about it. From his book you can feel how much concern he had for people. People trusted him with with their lives. His book teaches us a lot about jungles. I would recommend this to anyone who likes animals. Once again Jim Corbett you were and still are the best writes of adventures.

Editorial Review:

The last of Colonel Jim Corbett's books on his unique and enthralling hunting experiences in India, this volume concludes the narrative of his adventures with tigers begun in the famous Man-Eaters of Kumaon. These stories maintain, perhaps even supercede, the high standard of the earlier classic collection. Corbett saves his best story of all for the long concluding chapter in this volume, describing, in The Talla Des Man-Eater, how he embarked on what he feared might be a fatal last test of skill and endurance. As always, he writes with an acute awareness of all jungle sights and sounds, choosing words charged with a great love of humanity, birds, and animals. His calm and straightforward modesty heightens the excitement and suspense of these experiences, in which he continuously risks his life to free the Indian tarai of dangerous man-eaters.