Footloose in the Himalaya
Product DescriptionThis book chronicles the author’s extensive travels through the Himalaya. For him, travel in the Himalaya is as much about the spirit as about landscapes, leeches and aching knees. This sets him on a lively trail of holy men, both saintly and fraudulent, across all the pilgrim centres of the Himalaya. He travels in bulging buses to Rishikesh and Badrinath, Kedarnath and Gangotri. He seeks out tiny disused temples to little-known deities like Anasuiya, and discovers . . . More >>
Bill Aitken, a Scot by birth, received a graduate degree in religion from a prestigious English university and decided as a reward to take the proverbial shoestring journey around the world and see what he had been studying about. He got to the Himalayas – and found what he was looking for. Forty years later, he’s still there – having lived in two very different ashrams, taught English, and after marrying a woman from the former Indian royalty, becoming a naturalized Indian citizen. And all the time, he walked – not having the money, time, or inclination for summit climbs, he hiked throughout the local foothills, the level at which people and vegetation live. He now lives in Mussoorie, a popular summer resort, and there is a tone of elegaic nostalgia as he describes walking into town for the mail, passing the now empty homes of elderly British characters, themselves looking back towards the years of empire, and of following for miles the now abandoned bridle paths cut by the forestry service. He is, however, still very much involved in the everyday life and current problems of the area, from the standpoint of a local resident, rather than an outside do-gooder. A charming little book, which will have readers fantasizing about digging out their own trekking gear.
Rating: 4 / 5