The invitation poster for the event. (Clockwise from Left - Book Cover for the India Edition, Author of the book, Description of the book.)
Image Courtesy - Roli Books (Nandini Vaish)
In the pleasant evening of October 5 an interactive session, with London based Travel Writer Monisha Rajesh, was organised at Kunzum Travel Cafe. She is an experienced writer who has just come out with a new book called Around India in 80 Trains. She has also written for the London Evening Standard, The Guardian, TIME magazine and The New York Times. The event was hosted by another well known Travel Writer Ajay Jain.
In the interactive session Traveler Monisha discussed frankly, her experiences of traveling across India in the vast network of the Indian Railways. She also read out excerpts from her newly launched book Around India in 80 Trains (published in India by Roli Books). She revealed that in the process of traveling in the 80 trains she experienced the best quality of India amongst others i.e. the helpful demeanour of Indians.
From helping her to board an already moving train in Gujarat (West India) to offering to make reservations for her (in advance) in Ledo, Assam (East India) the common Indian was very helpful. In some cases the common Indian was over helpful as well and traveler Monisha often ended up choosing from between four to six answers for one question asked! We also learnt the minor fact that by the time of completion of her journey she covered a mind-boggling 40,000 kilometers (24,855 miles)!
Apart from talking about her new book, Traveler Monisha discussed the finer points of Travel Writing and also gave really useful tips to budding writers on how to further their careers in Travel Writing.
To conclude it all, it was a really great evening for the Travel Writers as they got quite a few tips over the subject. I must also add that my after-session discussions with Traveler Monisha, Traveler Ajay Jain and Ms Krinna Shah (a renowned social activist) were equally enriching.
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(In the world of Path Rarely Taken all the Travelers are equal by the virtue of their love of the planet and travel.) (Pictures of the session will be posted soon!)
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