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From: riddle@is.rice.edu (Prentiss Riddle)
Date: 26 Sep 95
... ...
Finding the beauty which lies hidden under the surface of dirt, poverty, suffering, intolerance and chaos of life in India.
The continual mingling streams of outside cultural influences which contribute to Indian culture but never completely take it over. The recent overlay of modern western culture is but the latest in a long series of invasions of India going back thousands of years.
Individual, personal detail in a nation of nearly a billion souls. I've wished that I had the photographic skills to do a photo essay on the small Hindu temples found in millions of Indian homes and businesses. Often consisting of just a few thumb-sized idols arranged on a shelf or in a corner, each of these miniature temples is unique, even though they all share the same elements.
I don't know whether that is what you were looking for, but that is what comes to mind.
You might find it useful to look at others' work about India. From a recent thread on Usenet, here are some favorite authors and books:
INDIAN AUTHORS OF FICTION
Amitav Ghosh
Rohinton Mistry
Bharati Mukherjee
R.K. Narayan
Salman Rushdie
(if you're put off by the "Satanic Verses" controversy, a good place to start would be his fine collection of short stories "East, West")
NONFICTION ABOUT INDIA
"Plain Tales from the Raj" ed. by C. Allen
"Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God" by Jonah Blank
"The Speaking Tree" by Richard Lannoy
(your wife should see in particular Lannoy's chapters on the developmental psychology of the Indian child)
"A Goddess in the Stones" by Norman Lewis
Ved Mehta
V.S. Naipaul
Since you're thinking about visiting Nepal, you should definitely read "The Snow Leopard" by Peter Matthiessen.
As for photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson did some very famous work in India, as have many others since.
I hope this helps. Have a wonderful trip.
-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle@rice.edu -- RiceInfo Administrator, Rice University / http://is.rice.edu/~riddle
From: vladnarus@aol.com (VladNaRus)
Date: 18 Sep 95
Don't forget the best history I've read, R L Basham's "The Glory That Was India," or neglect V.S.Naipaul's three tomes on India (from the Exile's view as it were), or his "Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey".
I'm fond of Geoffrey Moorhouse's "Journey to the Frontier," & have discovered Peter Hopkirk's lesser-known works on the area after his fine "The Great Game" - also new is "The (or This) Honorable Company, " by a fellow named I think Seay (I borrowed this one).
Mark in Houston
<-----who still rereads Mason's "A Matter of Honour" VladNaRus
From: sven.berglund@nts.mh.se (Sven Berglund)
Date: 09 Apr 96
The LP India guidebook is by far the best general one on the country.
Make sure you have the 1996 edition - apart from being updated, it also has much better town maps than previous ones. Do plan to make your first stop or two at what they consider a top end hotel (but not necessarily the top of the tops) - what they call a good mid-level one is usually quite acceptable but may not be what you expect, it takes a little experience to find out what LP comments really mean. And remember that hotel rooms have always gone up - do not blame LP for this, it happens even where hardly a tourist ever goes.
If you then feel you need more information on temples, palaces, mosques, Raj remains etc, supplement with the Penguin Monuments of India, a splendidly detailed work.
If you are planning to tour India by train (by far the most comfortable way, the roads being often pretty bad and the driving nerve-shattering), also get Royston Ellis, India by Rail, a minor classic, one of the best books of its kind ever written. (Do not believe horror stories of overcrowded, super-dirty trains: we have now done three month-long train tours of India and never seen a long-distance train remotely like that, although Delhi, Bombay and Madras suburban trains are another matter. In fact, we have now stopped making reservations on day trains: with an IndRail pass, there is no need. But no guarantees, of course ...).
From: binkj000@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de (Jochen Bink)
Date: 09 Apr 96
rutherfd@iconz.co.nz wrote:
>Does anyone have experience of this guide and if so, how did you find
>it?
Depends on your budget whether it's the best for you or not. It's dfinitely one of the TWO MUST-HAVES in India for an individual traveller.
I prefer the Trade&Travel South Asia Handbook (now renamed India Handbook, I understand) (marketed elsewhere by Prentice Hall, if I'm not mistaken) for deeper and more knowledgeable accounts of Indian culture and explanation of sites, customs, tales, etc. It also lists accomodation , transport and restaurant info like the Lonely Planet.
Updated on a yearly basis (they do not travel around every year to check, but travellers - like me :-) - mail their trip reports).
The Lonely Planet and the India Handbook complement each other well, as the LP hotels tend to be overrun and more expensive than noted.
The edge LP has over the other one is when you want to visit those small hard-to-get-to places. The Handbook will tell you how to get there from a car owner's (or renter's) point of view: "5 miles off the road between A-pur and B-derabad". LP will give you other hints, like "take the rickety public bus leaving at the temple in A-pur to get there."
Another advantage of LP: the maps are more detailed, however they do not include as many as the Handbook. As I said, they complement well.
Finally, you do not need to buy any of these before reaching India as they are readily available at good bookstores in the bigger cities at at least 500% less. Unless you want to inform yourself about India ahed of the trip, which you should. But don't PLAN too much. You'll be spending hours on the trains (you should) where you can plan at ease, with a cup of cardamom tea brought to your seat for Rs 2,50 only each (US$0,10). Do not plan too much in advance, this is not what India is about.
Rather consider concentrating on a limited area of India if you have ONLY six weeks (I mean it). Rajasthan can be "done" in three, so can South India, but then you're almost hurrying, and missing out on nature (count up to a week for a rewarding visit to a wildlife park), Goa would be another week.
India is a country you can come back to five, six times and still not be through with it.
Have fun!
-- Jochen Bink, Vogelsbergstr. 25, D-55129 Mainz, Germany
E-Mails: binkj000@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de (Modem)
From: binkj000@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de (Jochen Bink)
Date: 09 Apr 96
mnc@igc.org (Miguel Cruz) wrote:
>In Agra there's a hotel called "Hotel Lonely Planet". The owners of the
>competing hotel next door said the Hotel Lonely Planet people put the sign
>out when people following Lonely Planet's directions came to two hotels
>and went to the other place half the time.
Don't you know there are no less than SEVEN Yogi Lodges in the outskirts of Varanasi, and all of THREE Trimurti Lodges? Never be fooled by the touts! The original hotels are worth going to, and if they aren't leading you through a maze of narrow roads full of shops and cows to get there it's probably a fake. Get a rikshaw and go to Dasaswamedh Ghat like it says in the LP map.
Above all, have fun,
--
Jochen Bink, Vogelsbergstr. 25, D-55129 Mainz, Germany
E-Mails: binkj000@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de (Modem)
From: stego@cfn.ist.utl.pt (J. Mario Pires)
Date: 10 Apr 96
>>...
I know very little about other guidebooks - I've only taken a look to some others on bookstores. I find it very good and very complete.
Nevertheless, I felt that sometimes one gets the wrong idea that finding things like accomodation is easier than actually it is. Maybe the main cause for that is the some lack of detail of some of the maps - sometimes less important streets aren't shown and that can be a real problem in urban areas with much large streets. The map of central New Delhi (Connaught area) is a good example of that - one gets the idea that is a relatively small area and it's easy to find our way and that's very far from true, all streets seem important, and many of them aren't on the map.
Another thing that tends to be wrong sometime is prices - they can be the double of those on the book.
Well, I pointed you the main cons, but don't get me wrong - apart from that it is rather good. ...
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