Books like Travels on my Elephant

A unique book. Read this and you'll find yourself in a disappearing world. Northern Romania eschewed the modern conveniences and less delicate touches of capitalism for most of the twentieth century. Blacker shares a life wholly dictated by the rhythms of nature. This is a world where the locals recognise someone visiting from another village at a distance, not by their face or their clothes, but by the horse they are riding.

Newby’s adventure classic tells the story of two unassuming friends who decide to go mountaineering in one of the world’s most remote and forbidding regions.

This book helped show me that anything is possible; all you need is the positivity of spirit and focus of drive to take on seemingly overwhelming physical and mental challenges.

His self-deprecating humour and ability to communicate and share the grandeur and beauty of Afghanistan is a must read for anyone who would rather make up their own mind about an oft maligned and feared region of the world.

Recently divorced and looking for meaning in middle age, this endearing traveller retraces the journey he made as a wide-eyed 19-year-old that saw him drive a car from California into the heart of Mexico in the hope of making a quick buck. The naivety and optimism of adolescence, beautifully juxtaposed against the reality of age, this is a poignant tale of lost youth and unfulfilled dreams that ultimately leads the author to a peaceful conclusion.

I know that I have really loved a book when years later I can still remember not just its plot, but exactly where I was when I read it. I have fond memories of reading Zeppa’s book in my guesthouse in Kathmandu in Nepal after pouncing on a secondhand copy. It felt like meeting a new friend. 

Zeppa swaps her dull existence for a two-year teaching post in a Himalayan village. She has fascinating experiences and falls in love with a Bhutanese man. Some of the detail about Bhutan is darker than I expected.

I’ve wanted to go to Bhutan ever since. I came close to getting there was when I lived in Bangladesh, but ultimately, I never did manage it. It’s one of those places that have gotten away from me, but I hope to get there one day.

Ranjit Lal’s writing is always quirky, fun-loving but contains a touch of mystery. In That Summer in Kalagarh, all these qualities are visible. 

The main character is always teased as ‘elephant’ by her cousins. Ironically, on a holiday in the jungles of Uttarakhand in north India they encounter many real and not so real elephants! 

What is the legend of the dead elephant, also called Gitanjali? Why does Gitanjali hear sounds nobody else can, deep inside the jungle?

A spine-tingling adventure, laced with dollops of keen observations and descriptions. 

"India will sing like a bird out of its cage when she is free," says one of the characters in this wonderfully engaging book. Times of transition interest me and this book is set during the early part of Indian Independence, when everyone was trying to find a new identity and way of living, especially Victoria, one of the three main characters who is Eurasian, or as we would now say, mixed race. She is torn between the two sides of her heritage. Some of the language is shocking in our times but it is a fascinating story of people caught up in a country’s re-birth. It is also a tender love story. It’s a great way to get a feel of that period of upheaval.

What I like about Prakash's book is that it is a very analytical text, very technical in a sense: it is simply trying to see if there are influences in Indian mythological stories from other cultures.

And with the same simplicity, he shows that there are, and in particular, Greek ones. He does it in such a way that you don't have to know much about Indian myths to understand it, and with a lot of (sometimes too much?) prudence.

Those who know the field of religious violence may find my choice of Ashis Nandy’s book of essays to be a peculiar one since it deals with a variety of issues besides religious violence. But one of his essays, “The Discrete Charms of Indian Terrorists,” is worth the price of the book. In it, Nandy describes the remarkably civil behavior of young Sikh activists who hijacked an Indian plane in the 1980s. He then goes on to disagree with Gandhi that terrorism necessarily absolutizes a conflict, and he rejects the common perspective, especially in the West, that terrorism is always evil. Though Nandy’s analysis does not fit all, or perhaps most, instances of religion-related terrorism it makes us reconsider our assumptions about the use of violence in certain situations.

I loved this story set in India soon after partition. It’s a long book with requires upfront commitment but Seth is a masterful storyteller who had me hooked from the first page.

So much so that I lost many nights of sleep and couldn’t put the book down until the very end. While I was immersed in this story and rooting for the protagonist, Lata, I was learning about Indian history, culture, food, and family life. 

This book is based on the series of articles that Dion Fortune (1890-1946) originally published in The Inner Light Magazine in 1939-1940. It was published in a book format with an added contribution by Gareth Knight (1930-2022), who continued and made more widely known Fortune’s work and ideas.

Fortune is mostly associated with championing the “Western Esoteric Tradition,” and she was critical of those Westerners practicing foreign spiritual systems, such as Indian Yoga, arguing that cultures should not mix. Nevertheless, this particular series of essays on “the circuit of force" displays her deep familiarity with Yoga, in particular as it concerns subjects such as the kuṇḍalinī and prāṇa. “I have tried both methods,” wrote she somewhat surprisingly, “and in my opinion, the Eastern method is incomparably the more efficacious.”

Knight’s comments benefit the book, as is usual, because they are based on his deeply personal experience with the subject matter… show more.