The Way of the World
by Nicolas Bouvier
It’s about a journey in the 1950s from Belgrade to India. These friends try to go to India in a tiny battered Fiat and it takes them several years, and it probably describes the attraction of travel better than any book I’ve ever read.
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“Bouvier follows some of the trail of Robert Byron, travelling to the Khyber Pass in 1953-54. But the book is mostly set in Turkey and western Iran, where they get stuck. Bouvier never wrote another book comparable to this one. I loved it for its humanity, for its footloose feeling. He says somewhere, “You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you – or unmaking you.” And you feel that he’s a very vulnerable traveller. I love that sense of not having a planned journey – it might go anywhere. He travelled in this funny little car, a Fiat Topolino. I travelled in Russia in a Morris Marina, which people laughed at, and it secures your independence.” Read more...
Colin Thubron, Travel Writer
“These friends try to go to India in a tiny battered Fiat and it takes them several years, it probably describes the attraction of travel better than any book I’ve ever read.” Read more...
The best books on Indian Journeys
Roy Moxham, Historian
