An Indian Odyssey

Description

Travelling by land, sea and small plane from north-east India to Sri Lanka and back, Martin Buckley recreates one of the great journeys in world literature - the Ramayana. The Ramayana - the Journey of Rama - is India's best-loved book, an inspiration to school-children, monks and moviemakers, yet it is virtually unknown in the Western world. The story of Rama, an exiled prince searching savage jungles for his kidnapped wife, it mixes Homer's Odyssey with Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is an ancient epic, at once violent, spiritual and erotic. Yet it also lies at the heart of India's fiercest modern controversy, the Hindu-Muslim clash that has claimed 13,000 lives since 1992. When Martin Buckley first encountered the Ramayana twenty-five-years ago, it seemed a key to unlocking the myriad mysteries of Indian life. He dreamed of retracing the journey of the blue-skinned warrior god from his birthplace in North India to the climax of his confrontation with evil in Sri Lanka. Buckley's own physical and spiritual odyssey, a sometimes perilous passage through India by motorbike, microlight, bus and train, offers unique and passionate insights into the heart of India - ancient and modern.

Martin Buckley has lived in France, Italy, Turkey and India and has worked as a journalist and broadcaster in over forty countries. He is married with one young son and currently divides his time between London and Corsica. He is the author of Grains of Sand and Absolute Altitude.

Sensual, earthly...incredibly well-informed... An engaging and powerful book * Daily Telegraph * Essential... it brings the reader into the heart of the Indian subcontinent * Irish Times * Travel writing with a difference as Buckley traces the route of the Ramayana, the great Indian epic, from north-west India to Sri Lanka, encountering "Marxists and Mystics" along the way. A brilliant blend of travelogue, history and romance * Scotland on Sunday * A meditation on the mysteries of life masquerading as a rollicking road trip, in which Buckley heroically makes his way through the carnal to the divine... His India is a tumbling riot of brothels, beggars, bombs, road accidents, riots, temples... Woven into his own epic adventures is his raunchy and believable abridgement of the epic Ramayana, worthy Vikram Seth * Independent * Buckley is a born story-teller * Observer *