Publisher: ‎Penguin India
Edition: 2001
Language: ‎English
Hardcover ‎
Pages: 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‎0670912336
ISBN-13 ‎978-0670912339

Contents
* Hill Station: Darjeeling, 1970: JAN MORRIS
* Romances: V S NAIPAUL
* Delhi Mail From Jaipur: PAUL THEROUX
* Footloose In Agra: RUSKIN BOND
* On the Road With Mrs. G. : BRUCE CHATWIN
* Leh: ANDREW HARVEY
* Riddle Of Midnight: India, August 1987: SALMAN RUSHDIE
* Death Lives In Varanasi: JERRY PINTO
* The Elephants Are Coming: ANITA NAIR
* The Forest: DO M MORAES
* Kumbh Mela: MARK TULLY
* Encounters in South India: JOE ROBERTS
* Emerald Route: R K NARAYAN
* In The Midst Of Life: CHARLIE PYE-SMITH
* Amritsar: City Of Nectar And Gold: STEPHEN ALTER
* Bandit King And The Movie Star: ABRAHAM VERHESE
* Memories of Bihar: VIJAY NAMBISAN
* Gwalior Today: DAWOOD ALI MCCALUM
* Burning Ghats: ALLEN GINSBERG
* Reports From Orissa: P SAINATH
* Promised Land: BILL AITKEN
* Nainital: NAMITA GOKHALE
* Mela Madness: MARK SHAND
* Along The Narmada: ROYINA GREWAL
* Land Of Seven Hundred Hills: M J AKBAR
* Gods And God: ANEES JUNG
* Koyal And The Guava: SARAYU AHUJA
* Ayodhya: JONAH BLANK
* Kutch Touch: SEEME QAQSIM
* Refugees: JAMES CAMERON
* Phoolan Devi, Queen Of Dacoits: KHUSHWANT SINGH
* Kathmandu; Delhi: VIKRAM SETH
* Small Orange Flags: AMIT CHAUDHRY
* The City of Widows: WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
* Cheera: ALEXANDER FRATER

Synopsis
This collection brings together travel pieces by some of the best contemporary writers in the English language. Travel writers - Indian and foreign, as well as compulsive wanderers without a home - engage with the comforts and the chaos, the convictions and the contradictions of modern, independent India. R K Narayan does a leisurely tour of Karnataka, taking the 'emerald route' up and down the Ghats; V S Naipaul rages through hot, crowded and apathetic New Delhi; and Vikram Seth flies back, after months of hitch-hiking in strange lands, to familiars, respite and Delhi customs. Ruskin Bond explores the laid-back Agra of the 1960s in the shadow of the unchanging Taj; and midnight's child Salman Rushdie returns to the land of his birth to try and answer a riddle: Does India exist?

At the Kumbh Mela, the world's biggest religious festival, Mark Tully meets a 300-year-old Sadhu. In the forests of the Western Chats, Abraham Verghese hopes to run into the brigand Veerappan. Jan Morris rides the toy train to ' the most celebrated of Indian hill stations' that is 'all smallness'. And Bruce Chatwin hits the road with the entourage of the post-Emergency, out-of-power Indira Gandhi to see 'Madame in action'.

Also in these pages are Paul Theroux, Khushwant Singh, William Dalrymple, Andrew Harvey, Amit Chaudhuri, Allen Ginsberg, Joe Roberts and P Sainath, among others, taking us to places as familiar or remote as Jaipur, Ladakh, Behmai and the Cut-off Area.

Beginning with a brilliantly insightful introduction by Dom Moraes, this anthology provides an absorbing, lively and always interesting portrait of life in contemporary India.