Click Here to Buy Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald on Amazon.com
Books on Travelogues)
Books on Travelogues)Review by MyHinduPage.org. This book will make you chuckle, feel touched, disgusted or in awe of life and living in India. This is a story of a foreigner's growing fondness of a culture and people she at first had no regard for it is presented with such candid recollections that are entertaining and thought provoking. It is also a great documentary book of the tapestry of life one can encounter in India.
Review by S. Calhoun on Amazon.com
Eleven years after backpacking through India with complaints of the poverty, heat and pollution Australian Sarah Macdonald relented to never return; she even went to the extreme of flipping the middle finger to the ground below as her plane ascended into the sky. Sarah wasn't necessarily happy to quit her successful job in Sydney to relocate to New Delhi to live with her journalist boyfriend; she often wondered if she was making the right decision. Upon arrival she started having flashbacks of pugnant body odor and beggars with leprosy. The pollution and thick smog affected her health and wellbeing. It is clear that she isn't quite cut out to live in New Delhi.
After reading the first couple chapters I expected HOLY COW to be filled with constant whining of India's derelict living conditions and complaints based on a Westernized perspective resulting in a mediocre travel narrative. But low and behold, I was soon pleasantly surprised how Sarah slowly evolved and reevaluated the country that she has scorned for so many years. After she started becoming reacquainted in her new home she started looking beyond the mayhem and dirt and began to see the beauty of India. Being a devout atheist when she first moved to New Delhi she slowly awoke and embraced the dynamic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism; she began to appreciate the sounds and surroundings of her new home.
While her husband is busy working Sarah was able to travel throughout India with her new perspectives and begins to enjoy the dichotomies that India offers. My favorite side trip was the Buddhist retreat in the Himalayan footsteps that taught her to meditate by concentrating on her breathing. I cannot imagine undergoing anything close to that endeavor.
Throughout HOLY COW Sarah Macdonald succeeded in digging past a traveler's first impressions of India to highlight the beauty of this varied land. By reading HOLY COW I now understand just a little bit more of India, and that was my initial goal when I first picked up this book.
I picked his book up quite reluctantly thinking it was yet another babble by a nirvana-seeking Westerner. The first few pages confirmed what I feared. But I still enjoyed the writing style, which is usually unseen in India. And then began the real story. I must have finished in just a few sittings. It shows why an outsider's perspective is sometimes very important to the actual picture. You and I sure do see a guy pissing on a wall, a missing slab on the drain, an open manhole, or millions of such discrepancies in our country. But we seldom give it a second look because it's been just the way India is, and India is going to be. Yet, there's something else that Sarah Macdonald found amidst the filth, smog, grime, lies, inefficiency, backwardness that India often is. A superb book !!!
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