India-Travel Guide: Spiritual Tourism and Ground Realities

Review: By Victor Cuthbert

This is a travel book breath - taking in its scope! The author is the founder-director of the Vedanic Research Centre in Dehradun, North India. The reader is taken on a tour of northern Indian states and cities, villages and quiet valleys, and hidden spots in the Himalayas. In delightful prose we explore from our armchair bustling towns. small villages, ancient cities, exotic temples. For the visitor to India these are arranged in a series of 21 tours , and the author opens up for them delightful places, often off the beaten track, with detailed information regarding travel, dress, hotels, trekking centres, lodges etc.

But not only that! This book is also about Spiritual Tourism, so the author also takes the reader through excepts of India's ancient wisdom via spiritual teachers of old, as well as contemporary ages and gurus, to glean wisdom as to how modern man can both face and overcome the delemmas faced by the modern world - such as terrorism, global warming - and the inability of man to solve these issues by themselves. The book includes interviews with spiritual leader as well as some appendices illustrating how far India has progressed in the realm of modern technology and, most importantly, the education of those who would otherwise be disadvantaged, through the efforts of Indian educational charitable foundations, helped by such Dr AP Ganguly's own Vedantic Research Centre at Dehradun. A book to enjoy over many readings!