Re-reading ”Chasing The Monsoon” by Alexander Frater

There are some books that I re-read every few years, and always with undiminished pleasure. As it so happens, several of them are about India, some of them my ritual pre-monsoon, hot-weather reading. Kim. Heat and Dust. And, of course, “Chasing the Monsoon“, Alexander Frater’s marvellous travelogue about following the …

RIVER OF LIFE, RIVER OF DEATH by VICTOR MALLET

I first read this extraordinary book about the state of one of India’s most sacred rivers a year ago, and was bowled over by the research as well as the empathy the writer shows towards India. Although lamenting the damage done to the Ganga/Ganges – this most holy & revered …

THE JEERA PACKER by PRASHANT YADAV

What an extraordinarily good read this book is. And, rather puzzlingly, what an extraordinarily uneven book it is too. I dislike crisiticising someone’s writing, because it is such an intensely personal thing, but this excellent book is so uneven in its writing that it could almost have been written by …