No comments about Through Persia in Disguise; with Reminiscences of the Indian Mutiny.

1 comments about Nelles Bali Lombok Map (Nelles Maps) (Nelles Maps).

1. This map has Bali on one side and Lombok on the other. Both sides contain detail boxes of major cities. A map of the Gili Islands is also included.

   The maps show both topography and roads. Major attractions are also included on the map. The map is in english.

No comments about Shanghai City Map by Hema.

No comments about Discover India by Rail.

5 comments about India: A Million Mutinies Now.

1. In this book Naipaul takes you through a fascinating journey through India of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Naipaul can really look deep into people's lives, facets and and their backgrounds. I have found this book one of the most interesting and insightful on India. I have lived most of my life in India and feel that Naipaul notices and thinks about things that I've come to take for granted.



2. Nobel prize winner V.S. Naipaul's masterpiece on India is a must-read for any Westerner seeking a deeper understanding of India. Naipaul tells the story of this incredibly complex country person by person, through in-depth interviews of his subjects not on politics, culture or religion but on their personal lives. Naipaul tells the stories of a wide range of characters--a secretary to a prominent businessman, members of the Bombay underworld, a Marxist rebel. He tells the story of Amir, the descendant of the Raja of Mahmudabad, now living in the palace his ancestors had gotten from the British, lost after Partition, and regained after he became a successful Muslim politician in a Hindu area. And the story of Kakusthan, a modern man who returned to tradition and the life of a pure Brahmin, in a ghetto surrounded by a Muslim neighborhood. And the story of Ashok, who rejected an arranged marriage, managed to break into marketing as a career, and now struggled with the decline of the genteel, Anglo business world he had grown up in. Naipaul's great talent is in ferreting out the details of everyday life--what his people ate, wore, above all where they lived--often in tiny 10' by 10' rooms with wife and children. One comes away with a great appreciation of the notion of caste, so embedded in the society and culture for religious and non-religious alike. One also begins to appreciate what a struggle life in India is for everyone, especially those who live in cities. This book is full of stories of struggle--against tradition, to preserve tradition, between castes, between Hindu and Muslim--and of more down to earth struggles--to find a job, to find housing, to choose a career. Unfortunately Naipaul wasn't able to interview women with the ease he interviewed men--not surprising in this traditional society--and women appear only as shadowy wives and mothers in the narrative. But a great book nevertheless.



3. The title of the book is apt for the content. Naipaul very delicately writes about the mutinies within and without in modern India. What best way to describe the struggle than to pick characters from different walks of life, explore them objectively and incisively. What you cannot miss is however his love for the country and a passionate desire to learn more about a struggle he could not be part of. This book to me is stripped free of pessimism towards India for which Naipaul seems to be criticized all over the place.

   I would recommend this book to anybody who knows fairly well about India. Its not a primer to Indian civilization, its deep and you'd appreciate it only if you can get into the skin of the characters.




4. "India: A Million Mutinies Now" by V. S. Naipaul presents a snapshot of India during 1988-1990. It portrays small on-going struggles at that time through the stories of common people.
   The book covers most of the India through observations at the places Naipaul visited and through the stories of people he met. Most of the people interviewed in these stories happened to come from small town or village and succeeded in settling in metropolitans. In that sense, it is not the first hand portrayal of rural India, but an indirect one. The stories, however, do provide an insight into the minds of Indians - this is, perhaps, the unique highlight of the book. With the passage of time, things have changed in India, especially after economic liberalization of 1991, but the psyche of the Indian people will take more time to change. For Indian readers, the book provides an unbiased account of the people from different states and their struggles - it will certainly change their prejudices about different provinces. For non-Indian readers, it provides a snap-shot that transcends the barriers of time, when it comes to depicting a picture of culturally diverse India.



5. 'TO READ of events in India before the coming of the British is like reading of many pieces of unfinished business . . . of matters more properly the subject of annals rather than narrative history, which works best when it deals with great things being built up or pulled down.' Sir V. S. Naipaul, without doubt one of the greatest of post-war writers, here displays an ignorance of both history and of India so terrifying one wants to think it a slip of the pen.
   
   Some 27 years after his first visit, Naipaul has returned, writing a travel book that bears his hallmark of seemingly transparent prose allied to a compassionate ear. However, he is performing an elaborate double take.
   
   Ostensibly, the book tells the stories of the lives of men and women he encounters on his trip through various Indian cities in the late eighties. They include vignettes of ambitious film-writers, Bombay gangsters, dethroned aristocrats, Sikh civil servants and women's magazine editors. It seems as though Naipaul is merely transcribing tapes, after cajoling interviewees with a novelist's questions, 'tell me about their faces', 'what clothes?' It is as if he only leaves personal reflections to take up the limited spaces in between. However, re-reading this 'reportage' will reveal something altogether more disquieting. His last book, A Turn In The South, was a genuinely affectionate account of southern rednecks. It almost pandered to American fascism in an attempt to understand the mentality in the southern states. This book, however, is actually no more than a vehicle for Naipaul's derisory swipes at things Indian.
   
   There are quite rightly exposes of incompetence and corruption it couldn't be a travel book on India without them. He describes the hours spent in the appalling Santa Cruz airport, watching his plane depart and return while contemplating the broken air-conditioning, an experience familiar to those who have flown out of Bombay. In Goa, he sees cooling eucalyptus trees torn down after it was belatedly realised they had dessicated the surrounding farmlands.
   
   But the heart of the book reflects Naipaul's deep-rooted prejudices. The thesis is as simple as it is flawed: that India, inherently rotten, was once blessed by colonial rule. Indeed, the only inoffensive elements of Indian life are the recherche hunting lodges 'of European inspiration' or the 'simplicity' of life in Goa, thanks to the Portuguese who had abolished an 'Indian past'. He sees only grime, improprieties. And he is aided in all his arguments by the fact that apart from his love of Indian miniature painting, he knows virtually nothing of Indian culture the music, the language as it were, some of India's saving graces.
   
   The book also veers close to being an unwitting crusade for Naipaul's lapsed faith, tempting one to see him as a wounded Brahmin. It is the highest of Hindu castes, whose members have had to accumulate merit over tens of thousands of re-incarnations. For Naipaul, 'the eternal grime of India' has been worsened by the various initiatives made to de-caste India. In Bangalore, he meets a scientist who moans about the quota system that ensures multi-caste entrance to university. Naipaul nods, commenting on a 'hidden irony . . . that the caste who had contributed so much to (the social revolution) should now find itself under threat.'
   
   Other themes, such as the mismanagement of Calcutta by Marxist governments, are explored without any reference to the success of provinces such as Kerala which boast some of the highest levels of literacy in the world. And then, as the book progresses there is a slow mellowing of tone. There are increasing references to his visit in 1962, at first recounting only India's wretchedness. But then, when he returns to the Hotel Liward in Kashmir, the core of An Area Of Darkness, he sees what was once veiled, All Naipaul's books display an idolator's belief in the West .
   
   that the country has been 'remade', that there has been a 'liberation of spirit'. But this mellowing is within the Naipaul paradigm: it is qualified by crass allusions to the great luck of the Indians in being colonised and educated by the British.
   
   All of Naipaul's books display an idolator's belief in 'European civilisation' or 'the West'. He has a touching, Victorian faith in its secular gods, such as science. A great travel book on India wouldn't have placed so much emphasis, if obliquely, on the mind-body problem, as the body-earth solution. But though he has assumed for himself the role of a westerner visiting India, there remains something patently unJudaeo-Christian about him, something that he tries in vain to suppress. After all, he wins admirers in the West partly because of his 'Indianness'.
   
   Enjoy it for the brilliance of a master prose-writer, for seldom has reading about someone's prejudices and complexes been so much fun. But be wary of the message. Indeed, if you really want to know about India, I can think of no other book you should so definitely not buy.
   
   (1990)

No comments about East of Lo Monthang.

No comments about Insight Compact Guide Cambodia (Insight Guides).

1 comments about Insight Compact Guide Vietnam (Insight Compact Guides S.).

1. This is the kind of guidebook that gives you a quick sense of whether you really want to visit or not, for which the pictures are probably more valuable than the words. Once you get the desire to go there, however, you'll need a more precise guidebook or, at far less cost, a few hours on-line, using the Insight Compact Guide as an index of places to google.

No comments about India West Nelles Map.

5 comments about Moon Handbooks: Indonesia (6th Ed.).

1. I bought this book in Jakarta, where I live, since I wanted an updated book for my business travels around Indonesia. There have been so many changes in this country during the past two years that you need the latest information. Bill Dalton ("Indonesia Handbook" etc. etc.) and Kal Muller (the "Passport Regional Guide" series, etc. etc.) have separately written some of the best guidebooks available on Indonesia. But I was disappointed with this one. Its beautiful, to be sure, with fantastic photos by Muller (many of which are found in this other books). Its a perfect bedtime companion, and a very good introduction to the complexity of cultures and sights in Indonesia. It will help you determinine where you want to go --- and don't you ever want to go after reading this book. But the book will not help you how to get there or where to stay. For instance: there are no hotels mentioned in Nusa Dua on Bali or any hotel outside of Mataram on Lombok, or outside of the major cities on Sumatra. And most hotel prices do not reflect the past two years drastic inflation. I would recommend travellers to Indonesia to wait for the next edition of Indonesia Handbook, or buy Muller's very detailed regional books (my favourites). But then again, the book is beautiful, so you might want to pick it up just to dream away about paradise.



2. A Canadian friend got me to abandon my English teaching business in Madrid for the promise of an "oil patch" job in Indonesia in 1980. I can still hear him today "The first thing to get when you go through London, is get Dalton's Indonesian Handbook. Don't wait until Singapore or Jakarta - it's banned out there.

   So this young man did indeed go east. The job my friend assured would be waiting was nationalized in the few months the intervened between our vinos in Madrid. "I hope you didn't come all this way just to work for..." read his letter I picked up Post Restante in Penang. Undeterred I managed to find another and better oil patch job. I spent the next three years working out of Jakarta and Balikpapan - Kalimantan's Jewel in the Jungle.

   And I used the Indonesian Handbook extensively. Across Java, the lakes of Sumatra, Bali and Lombok and my favorite Indonesian destination: Tanta Toraja in central Sulawasi. (If you see just one thing on the archipelago, see Torajaland.) This backpacker, now a newly minted expatriate executive, always took the old black cover edition on his business trips.

   So why do I like Dalton's book - and the Handbook travel series in general? I really appreciate the concise yet detailed "briefs" of key subjects. One small example . During a visit to Yogakakarta, I became interested in batik. A quick read of Dalton's brief two page "primer" I learned the history, fabric and style types. And I leaned a half a dozen key Indonesian terms. When I hit the market I was amazed at how well I could get the vendors' attention. Novice bargaining by Westerners is typically based on price. Savvy Asian peddlers know this. They usually display or direct a foreigner's attention to inferior goods. Experienced market hunters will talk quality first. The Handbook's brief's quickly got me up to speed fast - and got me some great batik pieces at great prices.

   I often contrast the Moon Handbooks with more popular Lonely Planet series. Marketed as a "travel survival guide" that's exactly what LP guides are. But surviving is only the first phase in traveling. Perhaps that why the LP books have become the "backpackers bible." But if you are looking to do more than eat and sleep in Indonesia, give Dalton's Indonesian Handbook a try.




3. This is the best, funniest and most consistent guide to Indonesia. I remember on my first visit to Indonesia back in 92, the Handbook was still banned under Indonesian law. One day my wife and I were visiting the great temple at Borobodur, central Java, and we noticed the local guide was carrying a strapping guidebook in his hand. I surreptitiously noted the title, and later visited a bookshop to check it out. I was in for a surprise - the 'official' guidebook was none other than the illegal Indonesia Handbook: different publisher, title and a pseudonymous author, but the same book alright. If you like that kind of approach to a small problem of censorship, then you'll love this book.



4. While at first look this book may seem very well-written and detailed, describing many remote regions of Indonesia that other guidebooks ignore, much of the description of such remote places is obviously based on hearsay.
   When visiting many of those remoter islands/regions during my 4 years around Indonesia, I very often found that the exciting attractions (like traditional architecture or traditional cultures) described by this book simply did not exist!
   Having not been there himself, the author must just have made them up. :-)
   While the background information on better-known parts of the country is more accurate and worth reading, the fact that many parts of this book don't seem to have been updated for decades further reduces its value.
   So I would say that for background information the regional guides by Periplus are better, while for practical travel details get the Lonely Planet or Rough Guide.



5. I spent a lot of time in Indonesia from '94 - '97. When I first arrived, I had nothing but I found a previously-enjoyed '91 edition in a Bukittingi bookstore. What really set it apart from the "other" guidebook company was the entertaining and tremendously informative prose. It was obvious that Bill really knew Indonesia in depth - this was not just a book for directions and place to sleep, but an immersive experience to curl up with at night and really learn about where your future rambling should take you!

   I still have this book, and I do flip through it once in a while and reminisce......

   The only thing to ask now is: what has Bill been up to lately? The last edition is '95 - ancient history by guidebook standards!