Book Review : Incredible India Bucket List by Aditya Sathe

Being passionate about travel, especially about offbeat paths in India, I am always on the lookout for travel books during the Blogchatter Ebook Carnival every year. This year however, there was only one English book about travel. Clearly the pandemic being at the peak in April- May, writers weren’t upbeat about publishing a travel book at this time. But I feel this is a great time to do so. When we miss doing something we satisfy our hunger through reading about it. Is it just me or you too? Anyway, I downloaded the book right away and read it in one go.

About the author:

The author Aditya Sathey is a civil engineer and map-maker with a penchant for poetry and photography. He blogs at Adi’s Journal and is active on social media. You can connect with him on Instagram and Twitter.

About the book:

The book is exactly what the title says- a bucketlist of incredible India. India is a fascinating country with the most diverse culture and landscape. Aditya Sathe’s book has a collection of 26 unique places in India which is on his bucket-list. Through this book he hopes to rekindle the travel bug inside the readers.

Offbeat Places to visit in India

What I liked:

The book is truly a tribute to the glorious diversity of India. The book covers India across its length and breadth. Each place selected in the book is unique in the whole world, and that is what makes this list truly special.

The second thing I enjoyed about the book was the “story time” in each chapter.  The experience of travel is less about what you see in the place and more about connecting with it. And how can I connect to a place I am visiting for the first time if not through the historical background or folklores around it. Whenever I visit a new place I make sure to read up interesting facts about the place, people, and the culture. I commend it when travel-writers take the effort to do this research for the readers.

I appreciate the author’s honesty in stating upfront that he is yet to visit these places. From what I understand, the book is based mainly on secondary research. And the author has done an incredible job of it. 

Despite traveling intensively in India some of these places were revelations about me, like Dharur fort of Maharashtra or Xuan Zang Memorial Hall. The stories behind many famous places are still not-so-famous. I thank the author for bringing them to us in a short and simple way. Of course I loved the inclusion of my personal favorite Hampi.

The language is lucid and the descriptions are vivid. The book truly takes you to the places virtually and brings out the essence of them.

What could be better:

There are some spelling and grammatical errors that stick out like sore thumb in this beautiful book. I couldn’t help but note one factual error in the first chapter. Thanjavur is in Tamil Nadu and not Karnataka. Hope these are corrected in the revised edition and the book comes out flawlessly.

Recommendation:

Go ahead and download the book on Blogchatter to embark on a virtual journey of India. I enjoyed reading the book and will go back to it again and again for planning my trips.

Rating: 4/5

When you are at it, don’t forget to check out a book on a similar theme but written in a completely different tone. It’s Postcards from India which I wrote last year for the Blogchatter ebook carnival. It is now available on Amazon in both ebook and paperback format. However, if you want to buy the paperback you can use my discount code DISCOUNT25 on the publisher site Notionpress.

Other recommendations

You can also download my ebook “15 Days in Europe” from Blogchatter Library for free. I published this travel memoir and essential guide to planning a short trip to Europe from India in 2019. You can check my other book reviews here.

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