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Masala & Other Mixes is an often hilarious account of an epic, 5,500-mile journey through India and Nepal. This travelogue is essential reading for anyone wishing to fully understand India or Nepal in the 21st century, covering as it does a wealth of subjects, ranging from agriculture to architecture, commerce to cuisine, music to movies and politics to prison. Importantly, the book examines the numerous connections between the region's cultures, religions, ethnic groups, communities and societies.
The story also has many dramatic and sometimes perilous moments. The author witnesses off-duty soldiers beating up innocent civilians on a train to Delhi, hears bullets whistling over the picturesque Dal Lake in Kashmir and is swept up in a full-scale military exercise in the Shalimar Gardens. Equally harrowing, from a boat he sees up close the body of a child floating in the River Ganges. In Nepal, a night time walk through the jungle is enlivened by the danger of charging rhinos and an encounter with an elephant. Even a goat threatens genital injury on one crowded Nepalese bus!
Masala & Other Mixes humorous tone, its blend of subjective experience with objective research, and its dramatizations of comic, quirky, disturbing and sometimes life-threatening events will attract fans of Bill Bryson. www.andyhanlon.co.uk
