Take the voyage to India
934678
India Arie is brilliant and fills my heart with her light and beauty.  My first CD of hers was "Testamony Vol 1 - Life and Relationship" which I have played for months, and am still hearing new things that touch me and seem to speak directly to me.  I went to Amazon in search of more, and found "Journey to India", and am falling just as in love with it.  I have ordered copies for all of my children of both and hope they learn the words, feel the rhythms, and are as uplifted as I have been by her gifts.
3511296
I really enjoyed this trip into Indian culture.  Fascinating look at what it would be like to go "home" to introduce to your family the idea that you plan to marry a foreigner!
661151
A lovely and well written story - will take readers on a journey to the two Indias - the urban side and the slums where female infanticide is a norm in life. Also a story of 2 families oceans apart but connected by the thread of a decision made in desperation and courage.
2333716
Its 80 degrees outside and Im huddled up on the couch with my blanket as Peter and the crew fights off the fierce sea and the ice on the Arctic. The eight-foot swells toss the ship, the ice scraping the hull, the image sending chills down my body. The year is 1857 and they are the fortieth expedition searching for the fate of John Franklins 1845 expedition. Franklins voyage was to search for the passage through the Arctic Ocean in the extreme northern part of the world. Had he been successful, the pride and honor for himself and his country would have been great but he failed to return from his journey. Now after many unsuccessful attempts twelve years later, his wife is financing this trip where his nephew Peter will be the ship boy, a labor intensive job. His uncle was a famous British explorer; he knew the route and conditions he was facing having traveled there before, so what happened and where was John, his crew and the ships they were sailing on? Setting off now, this capable staff was ready for the task at hand. Previous rescue groups had met Inuits and they carried with them relics that belong to John and his crew but how could that be and how did they inquire them, those are the questions Peter and his crew wanted answered. The conditions they were facing were harsh and their journey was tiring yet adventurous. I, myself don't know if I could have endured just extreme conditions. To be stuck out in the ice for weeks, just stuck, like a sitting duck just waiting for the weather to do its thing, I don't if I am that patient. Peter, this trip was more than he signed up for. The crew took him under their wings as he was the youngest member of the crew and he wanted to be included in everything. Peters position of the ship boy was more work than I believe he imaged it could be. The adventure on the open sea was only part of the excitement of their travels as the group split up and set out on foot to search for relics from Franklins expedition and to see if they could encounter the Inuits, the story spreading out onto the pages. It was a wonderful adventure, a story that took me back to the times when we relied more on each other, when technology didn't rule the world and I really enjoyed myself.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.
3915721
As a child growing up, we studied all about Indian History, of course, and the tales of how people like Robert Clive entered and slowly conquered India. History books have not generally been kind to the British rulers, and certainly they have much to account for. Yet, there are precious few books that have done good service to unsung English people. John Keay's "Into India" is one such book, as is his "The Great Arc."

This is another such book. Of course, it covers much ground beyond India, South East Asia as well as Africa. These lands, and the times, through the voices of English people who lived during those times brings history to life. These tales bring those times to life, and give us a very good insight into how the English lived their lives in our countries, how they interacted with the local people, their hopes and ambitions, and finally, their thoughts when they departed.

This is an excellent book, and to be read by anyone who wants to get a glimpse into the British Empire beyond the tales of swashbuckling Generals, battles fought and treaties negotiated.
4290572
What a fantastic voyage and adventure Steve takes you on in this book.  So nice to see some quality reading about life back in the day.
You must get a copy and read it for yourself.
3267227
Sell Your House & Buy a Sailboat is not just another travel diary. Ray Emersons upbeat narrative voice takes us from his retirement in Alaska down the Pacific Coast to Mexico, across the Pacific to the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Tahiti, Moorea and Bora Bora, Tonga, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Australia and finally to Southeast Asia with excursions to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam. Along the way, Ray and his wife Judy in their sailboat Nereid follow their bucket list to exotic islands and reefs, face-to-face visits with sharks, whales and wild beats, sample the joys of distant cultures, hit a few rocks and docks, sample curious cuisines, and develop dozens of lasting friendships with their fellow ocean cruisers. This is a trip full of fasciation, compassion, and humor. You don't want their monumental cruise to ever end or to ever put down the book. We want Ray and Judy to keep sailing, and we want to be forever part of their adventure.
893416
This was a fun and enlightening tour thru India with "Bindi Girl", Erin.  I've read quite a few travelogues of India, but this is one of the few that discusses learning about the religious/spiritual side of India.
4795139
Don't allow yourself to be turned off by this book's length. This is the definition of what it means to be a page turner, and whether you've spent time in India or not, you will enjoy this book.
2854169
This book is about a couple who travelled in India to experience a different culture. It is very interesting in that they appeared to be just winging it, and in spite of that had numerous great experiences. How they copped with some of the issues is fascinating. They are very adventerous!
615454
I found this book in a book fair in Washington DC. I never suspected that this book was going to be one of the best fiction books I have read. Balbeer Rao, through his memoirs, takes us to a grand journey across India  meeting all kind of peoples (Holy men, exotic concubines, royal families,  the feared Thuggee) and living all kind of adventures. In this book Andrew  Ward presents a very vivid image of India on the time of its independence.  He describes the land as he describe the people in all their splendor and  traditions. Read it!
4318647
Wow, what a nice book, a testimony that if you really want to do something, you have to go for it. It takes you with them on their voyage, with all misfortunes and also the nice things they experienced. I hate when the book is over... I'd like to go on for ever reading... very nice book.
2609300
In the footsteps of La Salle

My thanks to my contacts at Pegasus Books for my copy of this book!

Ren-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, made a historic journey from the Montreal area in Canada all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. He claimed the land that became the Louisiana Purchase for France. His journey took him through the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf Coast.

In 1976, in commemoration of the United States Bicentennial, Reid Lewis assembled an expedition to retrace this historic journey. His team of high school students and teachers, twenty-four souls in all, made this voyage extra special by making their canoes by hand; their clothing, their supplies, etc. were just as they would have been for LaSalle.

This is a story of people not only tracing history but retracing history just as history happened. They could have used modern methods, but they choose to immerse themselves in the entire spirit of the journey.

There is both trials and triumph. They made it all the way using these heavy canoes and period clothing, etc. But there are also the tales of enduring cold temperatures, long portages, dealing with storms and bad weather, mosquitoes, possible sabotage, food problems, arguments among the leaders and more.

Trudge along with our adventures five hundred miles through a terrible winter, with the added problem of moving heavy canoes and supplies. Ride with them as they rush along the rough waters of the Saint Lawrence and the Mississippi. The excitement when the canoes reach the Gulf of Mexico flows off the page and into the readers special experience in reading. I felt at times like I could hear rushing water and feel a chill in the air! This has been a very memorable read!

I give the book five stars!

Quoth the Raven
2035228
I recently read this book during my first trip to India.  Having limited exposure to overseas travel, the experience was a bit of a sensory overload. Adiga's novel helped tie it all together and gave me some insight into the study of contrasts that is moden India.  From the rural villages and the urban slums to the luxury high rises and Western styled billboards, India is is a constant juxtaposition of wealth against poverty and old versus new. This novel does a brilliant job of capturing that juxtaposition and the costs one must pay to satisfy the ambitions of upward mobility and the promise of Westernization.
4858394
This book provides an enjoyable fictional account of the historical voyage of the HMS Endeavour, a sailing vessel or "Bark" carrying about 80 sailors, marines, gentlemen, a couple of fancy dogs, a few miscellaneous pigs, a cat who apparently has big feet, and an adventure-loving goat, on a three year voyage around most of the Southern Hemisphere in the late 1700's to find a new continent for His Majesty, the King of England. It is told first-person from the journal of a stowaway boy who advances from 11 to 13 years of age during the journey. Although there are off-ship adventures along the way I really enjoyed the rich detail of day-to-day life onboard and all the many jobs that had to be done, the fish and wildlife encountered and studied by the gentlemen scholars, and the impressive efforts by the captain to keep the crew healthy, productive, and safe during the long trip. It's a neat book that every adventuresome tween, teen, young adult or old codger like me should read in order to get a feel for this interesting time period and very specialized career field that would be otherwise very difficult to learn about. I say read it!
517690
This book is a good effort to capture the extraordinary, harrowing, three-year-long journey made by a Spanish armada of five ships in 1519, led by the determined Portuguese captain Ferdinand Magellan, in finding a westward path from Spain to the Spice Islands near the Philippines. Magellan's voyage is a part of the Age of Discovery that saw a concerted exploration of the Americas by the Europeans in the decades prior to 1519, at which point King Charles of Spain agreed to finance Magellan due to the possibilities of profiting handsomely from tons of exotic spices from the Spice Islands.

The fact that Magellan's armada actually circumnavigated the globe and did locate the Spice Islands almost defies belief. Huge obstacles were encountered at every turn. And, the fact that only one ship and 18 of the original 260 men who embarked on the journey actually made it back to Spain, testifies to the extreme difficulties and to their courage and perseverance. The biggest difficulty for the voyage was the sheer ignorance of what lay ahead. There were few maps and charts and most of them were wrong. The vast majority of people in that era believed in sea monsters and the flatness of the earth. The men of this voyage had to constantly deal with something new and usually dangerous.

They frequently encountered raging seas for days on end in creaking, leaking ships, being tossed about as toys. Their dealings with native peoples were tentative, never knowing whether they were friend or foe. The food supply for months on the open ocean was entirely inadequate with many sailors dying from scurvy - a lack of vitamin C. And then there was the politics of the voyage - the division between the Portuguese and the Spaniards, which resulted in constant mutinous behavior.

Little would be known about this journey were it not for a detailed pilot's log and the journal of a man who came along just to chronicle the journey. Magellan is depicted as resolute and rigid with complete devotion to King Charles and the Catholic Church. There is no doubt that his unbending personality got him into trouble with the crew and the other captains, and most certainly led to his death in Philippines as he attempted to coerce a native leader. However, it is his strength and his ability to deal with any situation that enabled the voyage to achieve some measure of success.

The book is interesting but does get bogged down at various times in the course of the journey - a violent storm is a violent storm. A definite shortcoming of the book is the absence of maps that would permit the reader to follow Magellan's wanderings. There are interesting details such as the brief dominance of the seas by the Chinese in the century before Magellan and the more lurid details of methods of torture and the sexual practices of various native cultures. The author's task is difficult: to make real a journey occurring 500 years ago stretching over three years with limited information available. It would leave anyone open to criticism.
2368319
The Orellana expedition sailed down the length of the Amazon. I became addicted reading about this "Swiss Family Robinson" adventure. Here's the surprise: P.299
Orellana asked an Indian who the women were who had attacked his expedition. The Indian replied that there were 70 pueblos inhabited only by women. Orellana asked if these women had children. The reply was: "The lord who lived next door carried the women to his own land, his men impregnated them and returned them to their own residence. If they had a son, he would be killed but, if they had a daughter, she would be well looked after and trained for war."

If you are researching the early Spanish exploration of America or looking for detailed descriptions of why and how events occurred involving either the Spanish or indigenous tribes, this is a 5 star book. I got bored at times so I'm only giving it 4 stars- but that is me.

Here's some things I learned:
Men from all over Charles' realm-Netherlands, German, and Italy-went to New Spain.
P.39 Cortes 1522 letter to Charles V-"We beg the king also not to send us lawyers because by coming to this land they would put it in turmoil."
P.40 "In 1517, Cardinal Cisneros, Regent of Spain, received a letter from Las Casas suggesting that the Inquisition be sent to the Indies" (America).
P.51 There were 8 councils that governed Spain (like the US cabinet departments).
P.99 Cortes sent Alvarado to explore Guatemala. He so loved the diverse topography, fertile and beautiful land that he wanted to become its governor.
P.148 Charles had borrowed from the German banker family, the Welsers, because he was always short of funds for the wars against France. The Welsers got a contract in the New World to trade in gold, silver, herbs, and spices and began sending miners to the mountains.
Cortes sent a lot of expeditions out from Mexico City to explore Central and South America. He was more involved than Charles.
For governors with barely a footing on Caribbean islands and coastal towns, they sure were fighting with each other.
The slave trade with Africa began in ernest within a few years of the Spanish explorations.

Examples of the text:
"Having assured himself of the subservience of Coatzacoalcos, Sandoval and his friends set out in the spring of 1523 to conquer what is now the state of Chiapas. They then had 27 horsemen, 15 crossbowmen, 8 musketeers, and a black gunner with a cannon. They led 70 foot soldiers and rather more than that number of native Mexicans, principally from Tlaxcala. There was good deal of sporadic fighting against the Chiapenec Indians, who were armed with fire-hardened javelins and bows and arrows, as well as long lances with cutting edges. These Indians had good cotton armor, plumes and swords, slings for stones. and also lassos for catching horses. These natives sometimes used burning pitch against their enemies as well as rosin, and blood and water mixed with ashes."

"Oaxaca perhaps held about 1,500,000 people in 1519. This society had had in the past no draught animals, nor did they have the wheel. War was continuous, the wooden sheathed macana (sword) being in perpetual use. The main conflicts were those against the Mexica. The purpose of the latter was to capture slaves and by winning a victory, gather tribute. The religion of the region was comparable to that in Mexico-Tenochtyitlan, but human sacrifice was on a smaller scale."

I've given you an idea of the interesting history that the book has and how it reads. Is it worth your time and effort? There are ancestral charts of Charles' lineage and those of the aristocrat families that played major roles in New Spain. The 28 pages of maps are very helpful in following the commentary.