Slowly Down the Ganges

                                                                                                                                                       Travel

Slowly Down The Ganges

Eric Newby

There are many breeds of travel authors. Some like Paul Theroux are, it seems to me, weary of their travels. They find fault with everything in the journey. One wonders why do they travel at all. Some like Colin Thubron see hidden meaning in every sight, every people they encounter. They write heavy, ponderous prose. Writers like Graham Greene write captivating prose of their inner journeys, spawned by the travel they have undertaken. Fiction writers like Somerset Maugham have no patience with landscape. They look for the vagaries of human nature in the variety of behaviour of people they encounter in their travels.

Then there are travel writers like Bill Bryson and Eric Newby, who find incredible humour in every situation, in every place, every stranger, they come across during their travel. I read Newby’s A Short Walk in Hindukush about a decade back and was hugely impressed by his suave humour. This is one of the best travel books I have read. I read Bryson later and found much similarity in his and Newby’s styles, though half a century’s difference between two is evident in their prose styles.

In the winter of 1963-64, Eric Newby and his wife undertook a journey down the Ganges from Haridwar, where Ganga descends onto the North Indian plains for the first time, to Calcutta which is about 40 miles short of river’s merger in the Bay of Bengal. They travelled the twelve hundred miles’ length of Ganga, mainly in boats, but also in trucks, buses, trains and bullock carts, through the towns and cities along its bank. Newby’s tone is humorous throughout. His humour is self-deprecatory and tasteful. He describes the difficulties, which were a plenty. In the beginning of their journey they ran aground sixty-three times in the shallows of Ganga and covered only a couple of miles in six days. At every place they faced immense difficulties in hiring a boat. Newbies were armed with only a little money and a letter of recommendation by the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. The letter was only a little help at most of the places. Cawnpore Club would not provide them with accommodation even when the letter was flaunted, allegedly because Mr Nehru was not a member of the club and hence could not recommend anyone for favour in the club. Newby describes his journey and encounters with a charming irreverence. Journey happened just sixteen years after Indian independence from British. I presume world was much racist then. But there is not a hint of racism in Newby’s description of his interactions with Indians. He criticises what he finds appalling, as most Indians would and praises wholesomely what pleases him. He has a keen eye and his wry observations are delivered in an enchanting matter-of-factly prose, that reads fluently, yet is urbane. He eschews being judgmental, even when he writes about religious, cultural and social issues.

This is a fine travel book, an ideal read for an armchair traveller. It provides much pleasure and also a little information on recent Indian history of 1960s.