Travel plots

From the accounts of a 15th century Russian horse-dealer, Afanasy Nikitin, who pre-dated Babur’s conquest to Federici and Monserrate, who arrived during the reign of Akbar, there are travel narratives from 10 writers, spanning over two centuries, giving an insight into the entire Mughal era. There are interesting anecdotes from these writers who are often at their wits’ end trying to get the better of inclement weather, bad road conditions, rampaging highway robbers and political disturbances. The narratives record details of the serais they dropped in, of the landladies “who also makes the bed and sleeps with the stranger”, animated accounts of sati and local festivals.

Unlike the accounts of later colonial rulers, these writings don’t always come with a pronounced preconceived notion of the Orient. Instead, as William Dalrymple reminds the readers in the introduction, it is a celebration of their wanderlust, and often, a testimony to their own self-serving motives. Fisher, who took three years of intensive research to come up with the book, however, does not negate the Orient-Occidental debate totally. He calls these writers, rather cautiously, “unwitting contributors to later colonialism”. “For about 30 years, I have been studying and, periodically, living in India. Hence, I have always found first-hand accounts by travellers in either direction to be fascinating, both for what they tell us about India and also about the traveller,” says Fisher, also a visiting Faculty Fellow at Delhi University.