Martin Buckley
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 combines aspects of Heart of Darkness with The Odyssey but it has become a flashpoint for Indian politics, and disputes surrounding its locations have claimed an estimated 13,000 lives since 1992.
When Martin Buckley first encountered the Ramayana twenty-five-years ago, it became a guide to the complexities of Indian life and in An Indian Odyssey he fulfils a dream – to retrace the route of Rama from his birthplace in north India to the climax of his confrontation with Evil in Sri Lanka. The journey, by motorbike, microlight, bus and train, was sometimes perilous but the resulting book is a remarkable travel diary and a thought-provoking account of the story of India.
A rich account of a country bursting with piety and mysticism…Buckley has interspersed the passages with his own translated excerpts of the Ramayana and, in this way, the book functions as a story of India, wrapped in a fairy tale, hidden in an often perilous and fascinating road-trip diary. Essential stuff, then, that brings the reader into the heart of the Indian subcontinent. Irish Times
In this barnstorming account of a love affair with India that extends over more than a quarter of a century, Martin Buckley gives us a sensual, earthly view of the subcontinent… He is incredibly well-informed… An engaging and powerful book Daily Telegraph
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
Travelling by land, sea and a 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 vast tapestry of life that is India is vividly portrayed in this lively portrayal of an ancient story brought to life through a modern odyssey and spiritual search where many of the questions and sources of conflict remain much the same today as thousands of years ago. An absorbing holiday read! Yoga and Health Magazine
More Information:
Vintage • Travel writing • Previous ISBN: 009945890X
Publication date: 02/07/2009 • 368 pages • B format • EAN: 9780099458906
click here HERE buy An Indian Oyssey
GRAINS OF SAND
...a circumnavigation of the world via the desert...
"Driven by a desire to explore the most remote, barren yet romantic places on earth, Martin Buckley set off on a two-year journey through the world's deserts. In the Sahara he was threatened with murder. In the Gobi, he hijacked a cycle-rickshaw. Dehydrating in the Sonora, he hallucinated fruit cocktails. Encountering the desert at its most extreme, he learned how to find water - and how to spit tobacco into a camel's nostril.
Images of the desert exert a powerful grip on the human imagination, from Lawrence of Arabia to Star Wars. Deserts feel familiar, yet mysterious. The truth is that they are even stranger than we imagine.GRAINS OF SAND is a passionate, profound and frequently funny evocation of the world's deserts and the people who live in them; an extraordinary global adventure, and a personal voyage of discovery."
"inspiring" --- Michael Palin
"Buckley writes wonderfully well, with a novelist's ear for dialogue" Evening Standard
Click here to buy Grains of Sand in hardback and here to buy it in the (revised) paperback edition
A hitch-hiker's guide to the sky
"In his thoughtful and unusual travel book, Martin Buckley journeys through many nations, including Australia and New Zealand, Canada and Peru, Morocco and Kenya -- but the country he really explores is a romantic and dangerous place that seduces all who travel there: the sky.
Martin Buckley grew up near Farnborough, the heart of English aviation, and was always fascinated by flight. In 2001 he acquired a pilot's licence and set off to 'hitch-hike' by plane around the world.
The result is a stylish and often hilarious travel book, offering intimate insights into the thrills and perils of the pilot's seat - from a UN Cessna flying aid into a war zone, to aerobatics in a jet fighter, from chasing goats through snowy mountains by helicopter, to touching the edge of the stratosphere in a Learjet - and weaving a panorama of aviation history through the narrative."
"His stories are extraordinary-he tells them with the kind of boyish excitement that's a world away from airport check-in queues" The Times
"Read Absolute Altitude for the sensitivity and shrewdness with which Buckley describes people he encounters. He has an unerring instinct for remarkable lives behind ordinary exteriors" Independent
click HERE to buy ABSOLUTE ALTITUDE in the revised and updated paperback edition
A tank in the Chadian desert left over from the war with Libya, and perfectly preserved. I took this photograph unaware that I had walked into a minefield
The trou au natron or 'natron (a type of salt) hole' in northern Chad - a vast volcanic crater in the remotest heart of the Sahara
Hanuman -- Hinduism's monkey God, the action hero of the Ramayana, tears open his chest to reveal, seated on his heart, his beloved Rama and Sita
Martin Buckley on the road in northern India researching An Indian Odyssey with the aid of a 500 cc Enfield India Bullet
