India's Regional TRAVEL WRITING STALWARTS

FROM HINDI TO ASSAMESE, TEN VIBRANT WORKS TO BOOKMARK

- PRANNAY PATHAK

Anybody with even a passable interest in travel writing-our access to adventures in faraway lands, revelatory train journeys and voyages, culinary explorations, anthropological quests and historical expositions-knows that the genre's cup runneth over with predominantly Eurocentric voices. Among books by Indian writers and journalists, those known best are often in English, and seldom offer outrageously new perspectives. In a country that is profuse with a fascinating polyphony of languages, subjects, and narrative styles, surely travel writing cannot be restri

MALAYALAM

VARTHAMANAPPUSTHAKAM BY P. THOMA KATHANAR (1935)

The Malayalam travelogue—the first ever written in any Indian languagefollows a hazardous journey undertaken by two representatives of the Kerala Catholic church, from the Malabar coast to Rome. P. Thoma Kathanar, along with Mar Joseph Kariattil, sets off for a historic voyage in order to achieve unification of the divided Syrian Christian Church of Kerala with help from the Pope and the Portuguese queen, travelling first to Madras on foot, and then sailing for the Cape of Good Hope from Kandy, Sri Lanka. Thereafter, the duo reach the Latin American coast instead of Lisbon, to which they are bound. The travelogue, a seminal work of travel writing in India, documents their arduous eight-year voyage, during the course of which they also return to India, staying in Goa for a while.

SIMHABHOOMI AND OTHERS BY S. K. POTTEKKATT (1968)