Reviews

From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet by Vikram Seth

thukpa's review against another edition

3.0

9/07 Takes you back to a near distant time. The perspective of a native of a neighboring country to China is a refreshing difference from the more common through Western eyes narrative.

stacksoftbr's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful relaxing medium-paced

3.5

rupanjali's review against another edition

adventurous informative reflective fast-paced

3.75

sameerareads's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

solter's review against another edition

adventurous informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

em_beddedinbooks's review against another edition

4.0

Vikram Seth took nearly 2 months from China to India hitchhiking all the way across and finally giving go to temptation only in Kathmandu when he took a flight to Delhi. He passed through rural China, Tibet and Nepal ..enjoying most of the time and even the frequent inconveniences caused by natural disasters and human rules and regulations, met many interesting people and finally reached home tired, but jubilant.
I too travelled with him, experienced all this with him, albeit in the comfort of my home. I took only a week to accomplish this.
Read this as a part of weekend theme in IR challenges, and am happy thst I did.
It also fulfils another of my IR challenges - Armchair travel.

Would recommend his book to all those who like to know about new places and are not fortunate enough to travel in person, and who don't mind slow to medium, meandering pace of the book.

extemporalli's review against another edition

4.0

I think this is my new fav travelogue, which actually made me want to travel to China. (Rare occasion!) Seth's descriptions are so gentle and sometimes a little cutting yet somehow wonderstruck, and the slice of place and time he captures is so unique (Western China and Tibet in 1981), that reading each and every page of his is a joy.

I've read some bits of Vikram Seth - but this is the book that's made me want to tackle the massive behemoth that is A Suitable Boy.

Some choice quotations include:

Spoiler

Increasingly of late, and particularly when I drink, I find my thoughts drawn into the past rather than impelled into the future. I recall drinking sherry in California and dreaming of my earlier student days in England, where I ate dalmoth and dreamed of Delhi. What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

Spoiler

As I doze off to the soporific drone of flies, I dream of being back at Stanford University. I have been crowned chairman of the Asian Languages department, and have inaugurated a six-month intensive course in Chinese. Each week corresponds to a year in the life of the Chinese child. For the first week my students lie around on cots in the classroom, making various burbling noises while I and two other teachers talk in Chinese to each other. The students throw tantrums, but not as often as the American baby. They are whelled about the campus in prams, and swathed in over-thick padded clothes, just as Chinese infants are: they always remind me of over-thick padded clothes, just as Chinese infants are: they always remind me of overheated dumplings. In my totalitarian scheme of things, my students are sung to sleep at regular intervals with lullabies. The second week, a few elementary words are taught to them: 'baba', 'mama', and so on. At mealtimes or when taken for a walk they are expected to display a proper curiosity for the names of objects, though, in conformity with the Mayonnaise Principle, the intake of new lexical information has to be controlled. (The Mayonnaise Principle states that learning a language is like making mayonnaise: add too much at once and the mixture will separate out.) Slowly, through the compressed years, the students come into contact with nursery rhymes, written characters, simple comic books, schoolchildren's slang and sneers, buying and selling vocabulary, the use of chopsticks, pen, brush and abacus. They now participate in adult conversation, read short stories, perform songs for visiting Party dignitaries and foreign guests, drink endless cups of hot water from brightly-coloured thermos flasks, etc. As they rush through their adolescence and early adulthood, I introduce political thought, history, literature, bureaucracy, slogans and obscenities.

Hahahahaha!! So good.

sheemsinbk's review against another edition

3.0

A charming travel journal. This looks to be the first book by an author whose novels I've enjoyed quite a bit. In 1983, I suspect the journey he took would qualify as extreme travel - today, not so much. Its a fine book and I enjoyed it.

nikhatparbeen's review

adventurous funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

5.0

ordinary's review

5.0

Gentle, respectful, humorous and engaging. Just a few adjectives that come to mind when describing this beautifully written memoir.