Author: Shahnaz Habib
It’s hard to describe this book. It’s a collection of essays on traveling from ancient to modern times. The author, Shahnaz Habib, reflects on her own wanderlust and how painful it is to travel if you happen to have a passport from a Third World country. When she describes her helpless attempt at obtaining a French Visa in time for her to make a trip to visit Paris, it reminds me of my early days in the US, when I experienced similar challenges in getting things lined up for travel to Europe.
The book is very broad in scope and has reflections on what it must have been like to travel in ancient times. There’s also her fond descriptions of her father who likes to travel in his mind by voraciously consuming the news from all over the world. She on the other hand enjoys the physical nature of travel, even if it is experienced on a public bus in Brooklyn, with an infant baby on her lap.
There’s lots of trivia from the origins of the Baedekar travel guides to the fact that bougainvillea are leaves and not flowers. I learnt that the Sandwich was invented in 1762 because the fourth Earl of Sandwich needed to eat something with one hand while he had the other free for gambling. There’s a few other travel related trivia that is interesting but not sufficient to warrant recommending this book.
