Travel Reading Recommendations

My first ever trip abroad was junior year of college, 1997.  Spring break in London with a gaggle of girlfriends.  We crashed Anita's flat near where she was studying at London College of Economics for the semester, and then took off for the weekend to Paris.  Young, inexperienced, and wanting to be stylish in a city of style, I wore incredibly uncomfortable shoes but we still walked from one end of the city to the other.  That was the trip that planted the seed for my travel bug.

It was a trip to Italy in the summer of 2000 that started my insatiable appetite for travel books.  I planned the trip as a treat to myself for a grueling summer finishing lab work and research for my Master's Thesis.  I was a broke grad student but I made that trip count for every dollar by stretching a two-week vacation into at least six months of dreaming by devouring travelogues about Italy and fiction set in Italy.  Some of my favorites were:

• "Under the Tusan Sun" by Frances Mayes
  Please PLEASE forget you saw the movie starring Diane Lane, even if you sort of liked it at the time.  The book is nowhere near as sappy (and I'll say it- lame) as the movie.  This book has evocative descriptions of the food, traditional architecture, and lifestyle of the Italians. It will whet your appetite for a coming trip to Italy or will transport you to Tuscany (for small money!) if you can't afford a trip right now.

• "Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy" by Frances Mayes
  Frances and her husband return many times to the Tuscan house they've made their own, and you'll be dying to renovate a rumbling old farmhouse and move to Italy by the time you're halfway through this book...
  
  
• "Italy in Mind" by Alice Leccese PowersAn anthology of letters, poems, and excerpts, this rich book is packed with amazing writing that lets you traipse all over Italy from the comfort of your sunny spot on the couch.  

During the summer of 2002 I spent two weeks driving a rental car from the D-day fields of Normandy, across a bar of sand to Mont Saint Michel, then through Paris (again!), stopping to drink wine in stone villages in Burgundy, then continuing to Alsace in western France to hike through vineyards.  We continued onward through the cool forests of Bavaria into rainy Munich.  The trip went by much too fast, so once home again I savored the trip with some great reading on life in Paris and in the French countryside:

• "Paris to the Moon" by Adam Gopnik
  Adam Gopnik, a writer for the New Yorker, moved to Paris with his wife, baby son, and mother in 1995.  Just as we all do when we meet Paris, he fell in love with its cafes, neighborhood shops, and the simple pleasures of everyday life.  
  
  
• "On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town" by Susan Herrman Loomis
  For the cost of this book, you can indulge in the pleasures of living in a country house covered in roses, wandering through the French countryside to gather specialty cheeses and fresh oysters, enjoying rich coffee and buttery pastries in a cafe just steps from your home,  and selecting organic lettuce and smoked bacon from small shops.

This was also the trip that forever cemented my undying loyalty to Rick Steves.  I swear, if you're travelling anywhere that Mr. Steves has covered with his cut-to-the-chase guidebooks, his book is all you need.  Though the Rick Steves books are thinner than Lonley Planet and Let's Go, and have hand-drawn maps without glossy photos, they are packed full of precisely the sort of information you really need- like what sights are not worth your time and which ones can't be missed.

A fall of 2007 trip to Turkey and Greece was the first really-far-away trip that Mohit and I took together after we'd been dating for just over a year (not counting the not-so-far-away trips to Vancouver, Montreal, and across New England).  We were inspired to visit Turkey because my close friend Tulin grew up there and we'd been listening hungrily to her descriptions of the food, the culture and the landscape.  I certainly was not disappointed- that trip is still my all-time best vacation ever.  Amazing food, amazing places, in love with my future husband (little did I know at the time!).  Since I'd been super busy at work before we left, I hadn't done as much advance reading as I had for past trips, but I enjoyed some fabulous books about Turkey while we were there, including:

• "A Fez of the Heart" by Jeremy Seal
  Turkey's ongoing struggle to pursue European culture and respect while maintaining its individuality and predominantly Muslim religion is fascinating. This book gives you some insight into Turkey's rich history in a humorous and interesting way.  

Meeting Mohit expanded my travel horizons.  He challenged me to push beyond the comforts of Europe (Turkey was my first baby step).  Our month-long trip to Vietnam in October 2008 was my first time ever in Asia and a big step into the still-developing world.  To Mohit, it was no big deal- he'd already backpacked through Thailand alone and had been to India multiple times with his family.  But I was nervous.  I had no idea what to expect.  So once again I ordered armloads of books from Amazon.com, determined to understand the Vietnamese culture better so that it wouldn't overwhelm me when we landed.  The absolute best book about Vietnam was:

• "Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam" by Andrew X. Pham
  Andrew is a Vietnamese-American who came to America as a child when his family escaped post-war Vietnam in the 1970s.  In his late 20s, he returned to his birth country and penned a page-turner of a memoir documenting his guilt as a comparatively wealthy expat, his exploration of his childhood memories of the complex country, and his reaction to new experiences.  One of the best travel memoirs I have ever read.

For our recent around-the-world trip, I purposefully held off my travelogue reading until during our trip, because I wanted to take in each place fully by both being there and also reading about it at the same time.  I wanted to understand not only what I could see and hear and taste, but also the hidden stories about a place that books could share.  As soon as I unwrapped my new Nook eReader on Christmas morning (a gift from me to me!) I loaded it up with the 30 ebooks I'd been carefully adding for the past several months to my Barnes & Noble wish list.  I've already reviewed a bunch of these books along the way, but just a few of the best that I haven't yet shared:

• "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts
  It's rare that Mohit and I enjoy the same book, and neither of us could put down this action-packed page turner.  At 944 pages, it's a bit heavy for travel if you haven't got it loaded on an e-reader, but it's worth its weight in gold.  Based on the life events of Mr. Roberts, you're never really sure which parts are real and which have been embellished, though you really could care less because it's such an amazing story and a wonderful introduction to all the parts of Mumbai that you'll never see as a tourist.  

• "The Twentieth Wife" by Indu Sundaresan
  I was so sad when I turned the last page of "Beneath a Marble Sky" by John Shors, and then so thrilled to find this book, another fascinating peek into the world of Mughal India in the time of Shah Jahan and the building of the Taj Mahal.  After you've devoured this one, check out the next installment, "A Feast of Roses".  

• "The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca" by Tahir Shah
  OK, so I do enjoy home renovation projects, and yes, this seems to be a common theme among travel writers but it's a formula that works, because there's no better way for a foreigner to get knee-deep in local life than to tackle a crumbling house.  Tahir Shah is a great writer, and this book is not just about rebuilding a crumbling riad- by the time I landed in Morocco I felt I better understood what motivated Moroccans in their everyday life through Mr. Shah's memoirs (also see "In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams"). 

Later this summer Mohit and I are headed to Greece for Reetu and Stavros' beachside wedding (I know, it's a rough life, right?).  I can't wait!  Local wine, turquoise waters, and an event where I get to wear one of my Indian sarees and all that fun jewelry I've been accumulating!  The event is in northern Greece, on a beach near Thessaloniki, so before joining our friends we'll spend a few days on one of the Greek Islands.  We're considering Skopelos, which is where Mamma Mia was filmed, or maybe Crete.  So if any of you out there have any recommendations for some good Greece reading, please send along your recommendations because we've still got 10 weeks to go and I've got plenty of time to savor the anticipation!

Delhi, India

Our time in Delhi was a wonderful break from being tourists, and a welcome time to relax and enjoy family.  We stayed in Rajouri Gardens at the home of Mohit’s Uncle, Aunt, four cousins (Ritu, Mona, Bittu, and Pooja), and their three children.  I’d met a few of them briefly during the rushed craziness of our  wedding, since they’d traveled to America and Canada for the first time ever to celebrate with us, but we hadn’t had much time to get to know each other.  That didn’t matter- from the moment we stepped off the plane in Delhi, Mohit and I were both welcomed and loved and spoiled rotten.

It was so wonderful to be greeted at the gate with a five person welcoming committee and be whisked off to their comfortable home, and to not have to worry about touts and taxis and finding a hotel.  Ritu and Mehak handed me two beautiful huge bouquets of red and yellow flowers, and Manish stopped the car on the way home to buy coconuts for everyone; the vendor hacked off the tops and we all sipped coconut juice through straws sitting in the car.

Mohit and I spent most of our time in Delhi playing at home with two year old Himonshi, four year old Harshit, and nine year old Nitya.  Harshit was always the instigator, always dragging me outside to play cricket with him, or shooting at us with his plastic gun or climbing Mohit like a jungle gym.  Adorable Himonshi charmed us with her shy smile and always begged us to take more photos of her.  Nitya is smart, independent, creative, a great big sister and a wonderful helper to her mom Pooja and her masis (aunts) Ritu and Mona.

We were very lucky to be in Delhi at home with family for the Holi holiday.  Holi is a festival of colors celebrating the arrival of Spring and the triumph of good over evil (there’s a long legend regarding the demon king Hiranyakashyap and his son Prahlad, a devotee of Vishnu).  On the morning of Holi, everyone throws water balloons filled with colored water, plays with squirt guns, and covers family and friends in handfuls of brightly colored powder.  Our household combined forces with a second family household down the street (Mohit’s other Uncle, Aunt, their two sons Manish and Ashu, their wives Mehak and Shweta, and their four children Shrey, Riddhi, Isha, and Richa), and an hour later we were all covered in rainbows and had destroyed the entry room in the house.  I pity the cleaning crew- we made a huge mess!!

Mohit and I were very excited to meet up with our very good friend Reetu from Boston, who also has family in Delhi, and was visiting India at the same time as us on a whirlwind shopping spree for her upcoming wedding.  Reetu’s fiance Stavros is Greek, and they’re planning a combined Greek Orthodox/ Hindu wedding on a beach in northern Greece this summer.  Reetu’s Uncle was our gracious tour guide for the afternoon through Chandni Chowk, a crazy busy shopping district.  Poor Mohit survived almost five hours of fabric shopping as Reetu and I pawed through piles and piles of beautiful sequined, embroidered and brocade fabrics to select décor for the wedding reception.

We also looked up an old friend of mine who lives in Delhi with his family.  Sorabh used to work with me at Haley & Aldrich in Boston, and he returned to India two years ago to join his father’s Geotechnical Engineering firm.  Sorabh showed us around the Defense Colony neighborhood where he lives; we had a great time catching up and very much enjoyed the sleek, modern lounge Sorabh had picked out for us.  Sitting in the AC, sipping some wine and beer, enjoying Mexican entrees, we could have been in a lounge in London or DC, and it was a welcome break after a month in dusty dhabas.

During our stay, we visited with more family: Cousin Komal and her husband Sonu and their kids Bhavya and Naman; cousin Anju and her husband Rajiv and their dance-machine daughters Ruchika and Tina; and Aunt Moni and Uncle Surinder.  


On our last night in Delhi, we went out to dinner with a crowd of twelve- Mohit’s cousins, their spouses, and the kids.  After dinner we all shared a cake to celebrate Pooja and Bittu’s tenth wedding anniversary.  We had a wonderful time.

We’re now in Nepal- we arrived in Kathmandu yesterday and booked our ten-day rafting and trekking expedition this afternoon!  We start bright and early tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.  Since we’re headed up into tiny mountain villages, we won’t have internet access for the next two weeks…but we hope to return with fantastic pictures of snow-topped peaks!!

Amritsar, India

We made our first visit to the Golden Temple at nighttime, on the evening that we arrived in Amritsar on the Shatabdi Express train from Delhi.  We bought Mohit a white scarf for his head, handed over our shoes at the counter, washed our hands at the trough with everyone else, and then stepped through the feet-washing pools to cross under the gate in the perimeter walls surrounding the gurdwara.  The temple sits in the middle of a pool of sacred water (called Amrit Sarovar), and is embossed in 750 kg of pure gold.  It is Sikhism’s holiest shrine, and all are welcomed in.

We walked barefoot on the cold marble around the pool, left a donation, and picked up leaf-bowls filled with prashad (offering food, which is like thick cream-of-wheat mixed with melted butter and sweetened with sugar).  We waited in line with the turbaned crowd on the long causeway that crosses the water to briefly enter the glowing gurdwara.  It’s very beautiful.

We came back the next morning to appreciate the temple’s beauty in sunlight.  This time, we gave another donation and then waited in line with a large crowd for Langar in the public dining room.    We were handed a steel plate and a spoon, and the we charged through with everyone else when the doors opened, and claimed a spot on the floor, where we sat cross-legged on a long strip of burlap.  Men made rounds through the room, ladling helpings of daal, channa paneer, and kheer onto each plate, and others dropped piping hot chapattis into our outstretched hands.  Everyone ate wordlessly, and the hundreds of plates were emptied within minutes.  Meanwhile, the next crowd to be fed waited in the hallway to replace us.

We filed out of the room to deposit our soiled plates at the start of a massive dish-washing assembly line.  On the way we passed the kitchen, where the daal and channa were being kept warm in huge pots big enough for a person to bathe in.  As many as 40,000 people per day are served a free meal here- I’m in awe that we were all served piping hot homemade chapattis!

We also hired a taxi for the 30-km ride out to the India-Pakistan border.  Our guidebook describes the daily evening  border closing ceremony as “reminiscent of Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.”  I haven’t seen that sketch, but Mohit and I giggled the whole way through the goofy pre-ceremony festivities and the half-hour ceremony.

Given the tense relations and violent history between these two countries, and in this Punjab region in particular, I expected the border closing ceremony to be strict, military, intimidating.  It was the exact opposite.  As foreigners, we were allowed to sneak past the crowds and into reserved VIP seats closer to the border (Mohit was indignant that, after trying to pretend to be a resident Indian this whole trip- and failing miserably- the guard almost didn‘t let him into the VIP area with me since we hadn‘t brought our passports to prove his foreigner status).

We sat in concrete stadium benches about 100 feet from Pakistan.  Raucous bhangra party music blasted over the loudspeakers, and the crowd on the Indian side of the border was dancing and clapping and cheering in the stands.  Women and girls lined up down the middle of the road to wait their turn to run as fast as they could in their sarees and salwar suits toward Pakistan waving huge Indian flags.

When the song “Jai Ho!” (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) came over the loudspeakers, girls clambered out of the stands and down into the street to dance, arms in the air.  Many of the girls wore red and white wedding choori (bracelets), traditionally worn for weeks after their wedding; Springtime in India is wedding season.  Meanwhile, guards in the goofiest hats ever and Capri-length khaki pants stood glaring at everyone.  In the background, behind an administrative building, guards in the same goofy uniforms were practicing their high-kicks and speed walking.  Boys in the stands kept starting chants of “Hindustan Zindabad!” (long live India!).

Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side of the border, we could see that a small crowd had begun to filter into the stands, men on one side of the road and women on the other.  The Pakistani crowd couldn’t begin to compete in size with the vast, rowdy, co-ed crowd on the Indian side.  Nevertheless, the Pakistani loudspeakers had begun to blare too, competing in volume with the Indian music.

The ceremony consisted of men on either side of the border yelling into microphones, competing to see who could holler the longest without taking a breath.  Then the ridiculously-uniformed guards high-stepped down the road, where the gate separating the countries was unlocked and swung open.  Guards from either side (the Pakistani guards wearing similar uniforms with fans on their hats, though dressed in more intimidating black) high-kicked at each other, their feet kicked up so high it looked like they’d hit each other in the face.  I think I was just staring with my mouth hung wide open.  It was all so silly and surprisingly entertaining.