Abstract:
This article explores the history and evolution of travel
writing as a literary genre, with a focus on the contemporary Indian context. It
registers contemporary Indian writers like Pankaj Mishra, Pradeep Damodaran and
Bishwanath Ghosh, who have diversified the genre by documenting small towns,
adopting unconventional modes of travel, and weaving in postcolonial themes of
identity and belonging. Among these emerging trends, there has been a growing
engagement with contested geographies, including the Indian borders. This study
on contemporary Indian travel writing looks at the alternative forms to
represent the nation by addressing its neglected interior spaces and
geopolitically sensitive peripheries. In doing so, it not only broadens the
geographical scope of Indian travel literature but also contributes to larger
conversations about the redefinition of borders. In essence, this study attempts
to map the emergence of travel narratives which reconstruct the idea of India
not through its celebrated landmarks, but through intimate encounters with its
overlooked people and places.
Keywords:
Travel writing, Indian border travelogue, small town
narrative, postcolonial identity, representation.
Travel writing is an interdisciplinary
genre due to its associations with other disciplines such as history, geography,
and anthropology. Sometimes, it also thematically overlaps with other
literatures such as Partition Literature and Border Literature. While its
interdisciplinary nature has enabled it to be explored from diverse contexts and
perspectives, this very fluidity has arguably prevented travel writing from
being firmly established as an independent genre, despite its origins tracing
back to ancient times. In recent years, however, there has been a growing
interest among readers and critics, highlighting the need to examine its
significance more closely. In his book Travel Writing: The New Critical Idiom
(2011), Carl Thompson, a prominent name in the genre of travel writing, has
discussed how the genre was far from critical acclamation in most of the 20th
century and how it used to be treated as a minor genre of lesser
importance. Thompson recalls the growth of the genre, stating:
[T]ravel writing’s reputation rose
sharply in the latter part of the century [twentieth century], with the
appearance of a new generation of critically acclaimed travel writers such as
Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Robyn Davidson. Also
leading the way in this regard was the prestigious British literary journal
Granta, which ran several travel-themed special issues in the 1980s and 1990s
and thereby played a ‘vital part in establishing …travel writing as the popular
literary form it has become.’ (Travel Writing 2)
Travel writing is woven through the
threads of journeys, usually from a known and familiar geography to an
unexplored one. The core essence of travel writing, irrespective of ancient or
contemporary, lies in its attempt to capture the meeting point between human
differences — be it through language, culture, food, geography, history, and
many more. The main crux in any travel writing, therefore, is its negotiations
of such differences, and thereby, creating an enriched narrative of shared and
contrasted experiences. Since its emergence travel writing has continuously
shaped and reshaped itself as a genre and therefore, certain distinctions in
terms of form, style and content are obvious between the early writings and the
newer ones. In fact, there is a noticeable shift in why and where people travel
today. Increasingly, modern travel writers are drawn to places which are often
absent from mainstream travel itineraries. This shift is also marked by an
anthropological sensibility, with many writers turning their attention to
underrepresented communities and regions.
Contemporary travel
writing goes beyond mere geographic documentation of places, inviting readers to
engage with travel narratives centred on people, culture, and identity. This
shift marks a departure from the genre’s traditional romanticized association
with adventure, evolving instead toward a form of writing that aligns with what
Richard Phillips has termed as counter-travel narrative in his book
Mapping Man and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (1997). Counter-travel
writing challenges the traditional representations of places and people and
opens possibilities for further exploring into what is usually known as
familiar. This reorientation underscores the genre’s critical engagement with
broader sociocultural and political discourses, challenging conventional
frameworks and expanding its academic relevance. From the simple recounting of
travel experiences from one location to another, contemporary travel writing
across the globe has evolved to address significant issues. In an interview
titled “The Best Travel Writing,” travel writer Colin Thubron made the following
observation regarding the purpose of a travel book:
It’s
about building experiences. It’s not the intellectual understanding about the
subject, it’s the emotional experience of it. Experience not of any specific
aspect of culture, but a bit of everything. So, you get history, landscapes,
chance conversations with people- a smell in the back of a train, the way people
feel about their lives, even in some trivial fashion, plus a chunk of more
serious politics. (par. 13)
In its engagement with geopolitically isolated and contested spaces in particular, Indian travel writing has started engaging with such “chunk of more serious politics” (“The Best Travel Writing” par. 13). Therefore, more and more writings are emerging from spaces such as the country’s North-East, borders and islands. And in addition, the contemporary Indian travel writers purposefully select locations that demand critical engagement. Rather than focusing on well-known landmarks dominated by tourist activity, the contemporary Indian travel writings choose to explore remote peripheries such as the international border spaces. The aim of these works is not merely to document landscapes, but to engage with the lived realities of the communities they encounter in the travelled destinations. Through such engagement, these travelogues address underrepresented and overlooked aspects of travel locations. Our paper attempts to chart these Indian travel narratives, more specifically narratives that are: a) new in modes of representation and b) engaged with geopolitical significance and complexities of the places travelled. These writings move beyond mere geographical exploration, focusing instead on the lives, voices, and lived experiences of the people who inhabit these spaces.
Travel writing emerged as an independent
genre only in recent centuries without dismissing long existed accounts of
travel within other established literary forms. Reflecting the reality that
human history itself is a chronicle of movement, it is no wonder that glimpses
of such movements can be seen since ancient literatures. The ancient Indian
epics, for example, contain significant references of travel accounts in
different forms such as digvijayas, and vanavasa among others1.
In the Mahabharata, references to digvijaya are notably present in
the narratives of Karna, Arjuna, and Pandu for example, where these characters
embark on journeys that not only denote to their conquests but also provide
glimpses of cultural and geographical landscapes of the time. Similarly, in
Ramayana, the extended journey of Rama during his exile to forest (vanavasa)
provides a substantial narrative of travel, which though forced, becomes an
important game changer in the epic. In both these ancient epics, travels
contribute significantly to the literary tradition of journey narratives in
ancient India. One can therefore argue that India had a convincing start in
travelling and also in the writings about it. In her essay titled “Indian Travel
Writing,” Supriya Chaudhuri (2019) traces the chronology of Indian travel
writing from the holy Indian scriptures to the periods when writings were shaped
by power hierarchy. Chaudhuri states, “Travel writing from this region, in the
twenty-two listed languages of the Indian constitution as well as in the Persian
and English, the Mughal and British ‘languages of power’, constitutes a complex,
many layered archive” (p. 159). The reference to the Mughal and the British is
indicative of that power structure that reshaped the literary representation.
The formation of the East-India Company
in the year 1600 resulted in the arrivals of the British administrators and
travellers. Their works such as Thomas Mun’s A Discourse of Trade to the
East- Indies (1930), Edward Terry’s A Voyage to East India (2018),
Thomas Bowrey’s A Geographical Account of Countries Round the Bay of Bengal
1669 to 1679 (1993), and Alexander Hamilton’s A New Account to the East
Indies (2013) are examples of travel writings written from a more political
approach than literary perspective. Alongside, western scholars began
documenting the people, culture and place of India, often framing their writings
within anthropological and sociological contexts. Pramod K Nayar (2005) reviews
the works of the above early English travellers in his essay “Marvellous
Excesses: English Travel Writing in India, 1608-1727.” While Nayar restrains
himself from bracketing the East India Company (EIC) travellers of 1600-1750 as
“colonial”, he simultaneously believes that “the travelogues of this period
embody themes that anticipate and prepare for the overt colonialist writings of
the post-Plassey (1757) phase” (p.214). Works such as Nayar’s are attempts to
underline the colonial undertone embedded in the apparently “travel texts” of
earlier times.
The earlier notable Indian travelogues,
emerging in the nineteenth century, offer complex narratives shaped by the
colonial encounter. The article titled “An Indian Experience of Colonial and
Indian Exhibition: T.N. Mukherji’s A Visit to Europe” (2022), by Hussain
Ahmad Khan and Hassaan Ahmad Usmani, deals with the idea that Indians who were
part of the British administrations, were not passive participants in the game
of Empire. The work revolves around Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s famous
travelogue titled A Visit to Europe (1889). The representative stance of
such Eastern writers in the colonial period is mentioned this way:
T.N. Mukherji’s travelogue reveals an
ambivalent tension in the elite Indians like him. They supported the empire and
their status as western-educated reforming Indians but at the same time, they
also challenged assertions of Indian difference. For example, Mukherji comments
in his travelogue: “we were never natives before”, but “we are all natives now —
We poor Indians” .... We can also see that despite being among the people who
were organizing the conference, he still identifies with the Indians to some
extent by using the word “we.” (Khan and Usmani)
In another article titled “When the clown
laughs back: Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s global travel and the dynamics of humour”
(2014), Swaralipi Nandi has analysed Mukhopadhyay as somebody who was
overwhelmed by the European supremacy. Mukhopadhyay, writing during a period
when the colonial power dynamics heavily influenced perceptions, expressed overt
admiration for Western modernity while critiquing the East for its contrasts and
failings. This alignment with Western ideals somehow upheld the narrative of
European superiority, a perspective shaped by the imperial context of his time.
However, this is not to dismiss his contemporary Indian writers who made a
significant impact by offering authentic perspectives on the nuances and
richness of their Eastern cultures. One good example is the work by Rabindranath
Tagore titled Europe Prabashir Patra (Letters from an Expatriate in
Europe) (1888).
Later in the mid-twentieth-century, Nirad
C. Chaudhuri’s travel narrative, A Passage to England (1960) reflects an
ambivalent stance. While still admiring certain aspects of the West, his
critique of Western cultural and societal practices reveals a growing confidence
among Eastern writers to challenge Eurocentric paradigms. Works like R. K.
Narayan’s The Emerald Route: Passage
Through Karnataka (1980) and much later, Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s
Dr Dev Sen’s Bidesh Yatra (1996), can
also be mentioned along the same line. Collectively their works illustrate a
shift from passive admiration to a more assertive engagement with the West’s
flaws, signalling the gradual emergence of postcolonial resistance in travel
literature. These works not only showcased personal travel experiences but also
critiqued colonial legacies, providing readers with nuanced views of India’s
history, landscapes, and social issues, thus reshaping and empowering the genre
of Indian travel writing.
This has been possible with Simultaneous
emergence of works such as Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), Gayatri
Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) and Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths
and Helen Tiffin’s The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in
Post-Colonial Literatures (1989). With such works, the genre of travel
writing noticed a significant subversion. The agency of “representation”
gradually shifted to the East from the West. This shift was a highly significant
development, particularly in the context of postcolonial literature. This change
in perspective empowered authors from formerly colonized regions to reclaim
control over their own narratives and counter the often distorted or
stereotypical portrayals.
The postcolonial mode of travel writing
has evolved further and now the genre has welcomed significantly new approaches
from different perspectives with a contemporary body of Indian travel writers
such as Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Pankaj Mishra, Bishwanath Ghosh, Samanth
Subramanian, Nandita Haksar, Monisha Rajesh, and Pradeep Damodaran. These
writers provide a more nuanced, reflective, and introspective form of travel
writing. A striking feature of contemporary travel writing is the deliberate
effort to un-map the already ‘mapped’ (identified and hence familiarised)
territories. These writers aim to unsettle conventional notions of place by
challenging the stereotypical representations of regions, cultures, and people.
They leave readers in a state of wonder about their ignorance of places and
their inhabitants, even though these places share the same national framework.
There is also a tendency among these writers to select offbeat places and
unconventional locations as their focal points, transforming these locations
into meaningful destinations by offering insights into the cultural and social
fabric of the region. In the introductory section of the book The Great
Railway Bazaar (1975), popular travel writer Paul Theroux shares a similar
idea: “[Travel] It had to be total immersion, a long deliberate trip through the
hinterland rather than flying from one big city to another, which didn’t seem to
me to be travel at all. The travel books I liked were oddities, not only Greene
and Trollope, but Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (across
America, coast to coast by car), and Mark Twain’s Following the Equator
(lecture tours around the world)” (VI, Introduction).
Theroux’s idea of travelling “through the
hinterland” has resemblance in Bishwanath Ghosh’s Chai, Chai: Travels in
Places Where You Stop but Never Get Off (2009). The book redefines the
conventional boundaries of travel writing by shifting the focus from celebrated
destinations to overlooked transit towns such as Itarsi, Mughal Sarai, and other
railway junctions across India. Rather than treating these spaces merely as
points of transit, Ghosh delves into the lives, histories, and landscapes that
lie beyond the station platforms. His narrative challenges dominant notions of
travel by foregrounding unconventionally appealing locations typically passed
through but rarely paused at or explored. This approach subverts the traditional
itinerary of a traveller, emphasizing that meaningful encounters and rich
cultural experiences often reside in the most unassuming, bypassed locations. By
transforming these nondescript junctions into sites of curiosity and reflection,
Ghosh invites readers to reconsider the very idea of what qualifies as a travel
destination:
Why not, then, get off at these junctions
for a change, and wander out of the station yard into the towns and listen to
the stories they might be wanting you to tell — instead of just standing on the
platform and looking out for the man calling, ‘Chai! Chai!’ (Chai, Chai 6)
The title of his travelogue, Chai,
Chai, carries a deeply evocative resonance within the Indian cultural and
spatial landscape, particularly in the context of railway travel. The repetitive
call of “chai, chai” by tea vendors at crowded junctions such as Itarsi
or Mughal Sarai is an instantly recognizable soundscape for any Indian traveller
—
a symbol of movement, pause, and shared public experience.
In the
article titled, “Journeying through the Indian Railways in Around India in 80
Trains (2012) by Monisha Rajesh and Chai, Chai: Travels in Places Where You Stop
but Get Never Off (2009) by Bishwanath Ghosh” (2020), Siddarth Dubey echoes a
similar thought on train-travel:
An Indian train is a space that
exemplifies a true sense of transient cultural pattern as it travels through
different states of India constantly assimilating people of diverse cultures.
The incessant accommodation of people of varied stature, class, sex, age, gender
and race and refreshing it with “halts,” the train is always in the state of
‘becoming.’ An Indian train is an accurate exemplar of this liminal space. It
inhabits individuals carrying unique identity settings, acclimatized to their
respective cultural design, and gives them a space in motion, to not just
interact with one another inside the train but also record the change in
external environment. (321)
The implication of soundscape often adds
an important dimension to narratives of travel. For example, Saroo Brierley’s
autobiography titled A Long Way Home (2013), based on his loss of
homeland and identity, has significant references of sound from his Indian past
that continue to haunt him in his adopted home in Australia. For Saroo, the
faded voice of his mother calling out his name and his memory of railway
whistles, act as auditory triggers that make him travel across time and space.
Therefore, travel writing often reveals a profound interconnection with sound,
as auditory memories shape emotional geographies and influence the traveller’s
sense of belonging. With the phrase “chai, chai,” Ghosh also attempts to invoke
something similar. The phrase reflects true essence of Indian railway culture
and imbues his narrative with a distinctly local flavour. As he has stated in
interviews on this particular work, his intention was to write a book on Indian
travel, by an Indian, for Indian readers, focusing spaces that are rooted in
lived, vernacular realities rather than exoticized destinations. Chai, Chai
thus stands as both a literal and metaphorical entry point into the unexplored
geographies of everyday India, where the ordinary becomes worthy of literary
attention.
In The Great Railway Bazaar,
Theroux champions for train travel as the most authentic and meaningful way to
experience a journey. He writes: “trains seemed the happiest choice. You could
do anything on a train; you could live your life and go long distances. There
was little stress, there was sometimes comfort, and there was something romantic
in the notion of boarding a train” (VII, Introduction). For Theroux, trains
provide a unique setting for reflection, observation, and sincere interactions
with people and places in addition to being an economical mode of
transportation. This enduring fascination with train journeys is echoed decades
later in Monisha Rajesh’s Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile
Adventure (2019), where she also incorporates the rhythm and romance of
train travel. This type of travel writing that focuses on the journey rather
than the destinations adds a distinctive appeal to the genre.
In her words, “To
understand India, you have to see it, hear it, breathe it and feel it. Living
through the good, the bad, the ugly is the only way to know where you fit in and
where India fits into you... (18).”
In search of the good and the bad,
emerging Indian travel writers not only experiment with the choice of travelling
destinations but also with the means of transportation. Rajat Ubhaykar’s
Truck de India: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hindustan (2019), for example, is an
adventurous and insightful travelogue that chronicles the author’s journey
across India as a hitchhiker on long-haul trucks. Covering over 10,000
kilometres, Ubhaykar travels through diverse terrains, from bustling cities to
remote highways, offering a rare glimpse into the lives of India’s truck
drivers. The book highlights their struggles, camaraderie, and resilience, while
also shedding light on the infrastructure, culture, and quirks of India’s
transport network. In his review of Truck De India, Sudhirendar Sharma
(2020) highlights truckers like Karnail, Raju, and Liaqat — men who are often
stereotyped, yet vital to the economy and mobility of the country. This
highway travelogue is a compelling narrative of an unplanned journey that
reveals the struggles, humanity, and resilience of those who live life on the
road. Blending humour, curiosity, and empathy, Truck de India thus
captures the raw, unfiltered essence of life on India’s roads, making it a
distinctive addition to contemporary Indian travel writing. This distinctiveness
is reflected in writers such as Pankaj Mishra, whose Butter Chicken in
Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India: Travels in Small Town India
(1995) contributes to the genre by reorienting its emphasis from significant
historical sites and exotic landscapes to the often-overlooked realities of
everyday India. In the travelogue, he chronicles the effects of
consumerism and liberalisation on the middle class in India, depicting a country
undergoing transition and grappling with the conflict between Western modernism
and tradition. As a result, the book avoids being a romanticised description of
travel and instead turns into a sociopolitical commentary.
Works such as Truck De India by
Ubhaykar, Around India in 80 Trains by Rajesh, and Chai, Chai and
Butter Chicken in Ludhiana by Ghosh and Mishra respectively, share a
common thread — the authors’ conscious and purposeful approach to travel. They
are not aimless wanderers but writers who travel with thoughtful intention,
driven by a responsibility to document overlooked realities and challenge
dominant narratives. In Chai, Chai, Ghosh reimagines small railway towns
like Mughal Sarai, often stereotyped only as a place of lawlessness, of
Goondas (thugs), by capturing the mundane yet significant textures of
everyday life. Similarly, Rajesh undertakes a Pan-Indian rail journey not merely
for spectacle but to understand the country’s diversity in its fullest expanse.
This objective is echoed in Ubhaykar’s decision to hitchhike across India with
truck drivers, offering a grounded, insider view into a profession frequently
misrepresented. His work challenges the prevailing stereotypes of truck drivers
as reckless or sex-mongers by humanizing them through accounts of their daily
struggles, long hours, and deep-rooted responsibility. Collectively, these
writers contribute to alternative representations that resist reductionist or
touristic portrayals.
The field of travel writing is still
developing in a variety of ways, with travel itself serving as a vehicle for
delving deeper into issues of identity, social change, and gender among others.
This indicates that travel writing is now not only about moving through space;
it is also about critical reflection and representation. Additionally, this
expansion of the genre’s focus has opened the door for more gendered stories
that emphasise subjectivity and personal agency in travel. Example can be
Shivaya Nath who brings a refreshing perspective to the Indian travel narratives
by infusing them with a woman’s voice of freedom and courage. Her travelogue,
The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World (2018), redefines
explorations through documenting her journey of self-discovery and fearless
wandering across the globe. Briefly, the genre, often described as “ever
evolving,” has significantly transformed from its early manifestations. It is
thematically much diverse in the hands of the contemporary Indian travel
writers. Yet, there are places and people located at some of the extreme
boundary lines of the country which are yet to occupy a significant space in the
existing body of Indian travel literature.
Contemporary border travelogues in
general offer compelling narratives that reflect on the complex and often
contradictory nature of borders. These works document personal journeys that not
only explore the physical terrain of national boundaries but also go deeper into
the abstract and symbolic power these borders hold in shaping identities, lives,
and geopolitics. Erik Fatland’s The Border: A Journey Around Russia
Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine,
Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and the Northeast
Passage (2021), for example, takes readers on a twenty-thousand-kilometre
journey around the borders of Russia, posing fundamental questions about
national identity and the reality of borders. Fatland observes that borders are
“both very real and highly abstract” (2021), capturing the paradox of how
physical lines on a map can shape entire populations, yet remain conceptual in
their impact on individual lives. This perception on national borders as both
tangible and intangible resonates across other border travelogues across the
globe, each reflecting unique yet interconnected themes. For example, Leslie
Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991) touches upon the
struggles of Indigenous people who live in a state of mapless existence,
resisting the imposition of borders that seek to divide them. Silko’s
protagonists, scattered across America, grapple with the constant tension
between their Indigenous identity and the imposed borders that shape their
experiences. The novel illustrates how borders, though often denied or rejected
by these communities, are still ever-present in their daily lives, particularly
in their encounters with violence and systemic marginalization. This theme of
Indigenous resistance to borders echoes the concerns raised in border travel
narratives across the globe, where the consequences of these divisions are often
felt in deeply personal ways. Similarly, Graciela Limon’s The River Flows
North: A Novel (2009) brings to light the dreadful experiences of Mexican
and Central American migrants attempting to cross the U.S. border, risking their
lives in search of a better future. Limon’s work is a powerful attempt to
restore dignity and identity to the countless individuals whose stories are
reduced to headlines. By foregrounding the lived experiences of migrants, Limon
humanizes the border, depicting it not merely as a geographical line but as a
space fraught with both peril and hope. Her focus on the personal narratives of
people living in border zones is emblematic of a broader trend in contemporary
border travelogues, which aim to shed light on the often-overlooked lives of
those caught in the crossfire of national divisions.
These global perspectives on borders
align closely with the themes explored in what we term as Indian border
travelogues as well. Indian border travelogues, such as those documenting
the Indo-Pakistani or Indo-Bangladeshi borders, often ponder over the human
suffering of these divides, especially in areas where conflict and
militarization are rife. Similar to the works of Fatland, Silko, and Limon,
Indian border narratives also grapple with the border’s dual nature: as both a
physical space that separates people and an abstract concept that shapes their
lives, identities, relationships and most importantly, destinies. These
travelogues highlight the resilience of communities living in borderlands, who,
despite enduring violence and displacement, continue to challenge the borders
that seek to define them. In the corpus of contemporary Indian travel
literature, specifically from the last two decades to now, there can be seen a
distinctive presence of the less-explored smaller geographies of India. Even
then when it comes to the representation of the specific area called the border,
the non-fictions written in English are only a few in number.
Many contemporary non-fictional accounts
on travel are purposefully anthropological in nature, aiming not just to
describe places but to deeply engage with the people, cultures, and lived
experiences encountered along the way. Anthropology, at its core, is the study
of human societies, cultures, and their development — often grounded in
immersive fieldwork, observation, and participation. Modern travel writers adopt
similar methods, approaching travel as a way to understand social realities,
especially in marginal or politically complex regions. This anthropological turn
is reflected in academic works such as Chanda Asani’s Representing the
Invisible: A Travelogue Merging Identities and Borders (2015), Paula
Banerjee and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury’s Women in Indian Borderlands
(2011) and Gorky Chakraborty and Supurna Banerjee’s Negotiating Borders and
Borderlands: The Indian Experience (2023). These texts, though scholarly in
format, join travel writing with an attempt to capture life on the edges — where
borders are not just lines on a map but lived realities. They focus on everyday
struggles, identity formation, and survival in contested spaces, using movement
and observation as tools of inquiry. In doing so, they contribute to a form of
travel literature that is grounded, empathetic, and politically aware, blurring
the line between academic research and narrative storytelling. Another
significant work along this line is “Time at Its Margins: Cattle Smuggling
across the India-Bangladesh Border” (2012) by Malini Sur. Based on an
ethnographic study of cattle smuggling across the border between India and
Bangladesh, the article highlights the subtleties of economic survival, state
aggression, and spatial temporalities that are crucial to the precarious
existence of those residing in the border zones.
Apart from textual narratives, there has always been representations of borders
in visual forms. Some of the commercial, mainstream Bollywood movies
are centred around plots where borders have been instrumental
in shaping the plots differently.
Examples are: Anil Sharma’s
Gadar Ek Prem Katha
(translated as Rebellion: A Love Story), a 2001 film set against the
backdrop of 1947
Partition of India,
Yash Chopra’s 2004 film Veer Zara,
a heart-rending love story of two individuals from India and Pakistan and Kabir
Khan’s 2015 film Bajrangi Bhaijaan, a story of a lost Pakistani girl in
India.
All three visual narratives feature journeys that
are deeply shaped by the presence and politics of borders. In each, travel is
not simply a backdrop but a central motif that becomes fraught with
restrictions, delays, and dangers due to the realities of cross-border tensions
between India and Pakistan. These films portray movement as both a physical
journey and an emotional struggle, where love and compassion confront
bureaucratic obstacles and geopolitical divides. Whether it’s crossing the
border during the Partition, navigating complex visa systems, or sending a child
back home, the act of travel is continuously disrupted by the rigid structures
of nation-states. Yet, each narrative transcends these barriers through themes
of love, sacrifice, and empathy, suggesting that human connection can defy even
the most rigid boundaries and offering a powerful case for cross-border
understanding and unity. Along the same line, Samarth
Mahajan’s well-researched documentary Borderlands (2021) can be cited as
one of the latest critically acclaimed visual representations. The documentary
assembles six individuals whose lives are defined by the personal and political
borders across the South Asian subcontinent. A striking and significant
contribution of the documentary is its vivid portrayal of the lives of women
living in the fringes of India, as they navigate border-specific issues such as
separation, displacement, trafficking, conflict, and fluid identities.
In line with the academic contributions
of these writers and filmmakers, contemporary Indian travel writers such as
Pradeep Damodaran, Bishwanath Ghosh, and Suchitra Vijayan also offer significant
insights into border regions and marginal spaces. Through a more literary
narrative form, their works engage deeply with themes of identity, belonging,
and lived experience in these contested zones. While distinct in style and
approach, these travel narratives contribute meaningfully to broader
conversations about India’s borders, complementing academic studies with richly
textured, ground-level perspectives. All these writers have extensively
documented unfamiliar and remotest Indian borders in the form of non-fictions,
through books such as Borderlands: Travels Across India’s Boundary Lines
(2017), Gazing at Neighbours: Travels Along the Lines that Partitioned India
(2017), and Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India
(2021). With the emergence of such books, the genre is also getting enriched
with what can be termed “Border Travelogues”. Shifting the focus from the
much-discussed India-Pakistan international borders, these travelogues are
involving the fluid, hard-to-be-distinguished border spaces that India shares
with many other countries. Border travelogues are narratives that depict the
fluid, everyday realities of living in borderlands, challenging the inflexible
view of boundaries as rigid geopolitical barriers. These texts provide light on
the natural, cross-border exchanges that go against the official narratives of
animosity and division and thereby, reshape
the reader’s perception of the international border spaces. For example, in
Gazing at Neighbours, Bishwanath Ghosh reflects on his surprise upon
witnessing preparations for Beating the Retreat ceremony at the Wagah-Attari
border, a daily military ritual conducted by the Indian and Pakistani border
forces, marked by elaborate drills, flag-lowering, and performative displays of
national pride. Ghosh critically interprets the event as an expression of
jingoistic nationalism, referring it as a form of patriotourism that
prioritizes spectacle over substance. His observations suggest a disconnect
between the orchestrated performance of national identity at the border and the
reality that lies underneath:
‘Do you also practise with the
Pakistanis?’
‘Of course, we have to practise with them
too. We spend hours practising together. If one of our boys gets a step wrong,
they point it out; likewise, if someone among them gets a step wrong, we point
it out. It is a coordinated exercise.’
Now that’s something most spectators do
not realize: that the Indians and Pakistanis actually spend hours practising
together to look like enemies at sunset. (157)
Border travelogues highlight the
tenacious lives of those who still live in these areas while exposing the
historical traumas carved into the landscape by colonization, partition, and
state violence. By doing this, they present an alternate national consciousness
that acknowledges cultural continuity, resistance, and survival outside of
bounds set by the state. This objective is clearly reflected in the introductory
chapter of Vijayan’s Midnight’s Borders: “The more I travelled along the
border, the more I realised the books I had read were disconnected from the
realities of the people I encountered. Local history and memory sometimes bore
no resemblance to the political history I knew (19).”
This emerging sub-genre shifts the
traditional focus of travel narratives from picturesque landscapes and cultural
tourism to the socio-political realities of borderlands. Rather the focus of
emerging travelogues on borders extends beyond the frequently discussed
India-Pakistan boundary.
More importantly,
the representations offered in these narratives differ from those typically seen
in mainstream media debates on border issues. The mainstream debates often tend
to project the hostility between adjoining nations without addressing the basic
needs of people located at the borderlands. Following the 2025 terror attack in
Pahalgam, Kashmir, there could be seen dramatic headlines on mainstream TV
channels over who is going to win if a war like situation emerges between India
and Pakistan. This is not to dismiss simultaneous attempts to cover realities
from the ground. For example, Outlook magazine’s forthcoming issue titled
“Living on the Edge” (2025), shifts focus from cartographic representations of
borders to the lived experiences of those residing at the nation’s margins. In
these spaces, borders are not abstract lines but a persistent and often fraught
reality — where ceasefires do not guarantee safety, and the threat of conflict
looms without formal declarations of war. The issue foregrounds the everyday
struggles, resilience, and uncertainties faced by communities for whom the
border is not merely a geopolitical construct, but an enduring condition of
life:
Who gets to live in peace, and who is
always on notice? Who owns a homeland when the homeland keeps moving? And what
happens when the state redraws boundaries without consent? (Par. 4)
“Life in these border areas of Poonch,
Rajouri, Kathua, Samba and Jammu districts is a daily grind under the shadow of
mortar shells and shattered homes.” Ishfaq Naseem writes. From villages shelled
without warning, where gurdwaras become shelters, and hospitals are always
running out of staff, Naseem’s ground report explores the aftermath of the
Pahalgam attack and subsequent shellings on Kashmir’s border downs. “The
situation was not even as bad in the 1965 and 1971 wars as it is now,” says one
resident. Another recounts, “We stayed hungry on the day of shelling and for
several days... both the days and nights were bleak for us.” (Par. 5)
Contemporary Indian travel writing has
increasingly turned its attention to the country’s remote and marginal
geographies — spaces that lie at the periphery of both the map and the national
imagination. Travelogues such as Damodaran’s Borderlands, Ghosh’s
Gazing at Neighbours, and Vijayan’s Midnight’s Borders engage deeply
with regions often left out of mainstream discourse, offering critical insight
into how geography, governance, and national identity intersect in the
borderlands. These narratives document places like Dhanushkodi in the southeast,
Minicoy in the southwest, Moreh in the northeast, Hussainiwala in the northwest,
and Campbell Bay in the east; locations that are not merely distant but
symbolically peripheral to the nation-state.
A unifying theme across these works is
the emphasis on lived experience in geographically and politically marginalised
spaces. In contrast to traditional travel writing that focuses on landmarks or
scenic beauty, these authors foreground the everyday realities of people
inhabiting the nation’s edges. Their narratives are shaped not by a fascination
with the exotic, but by an ethical commitment to representation and
understanding. As Damodaran observes, “For those who live in big metros and
towns, citizenship and national identity are privileges we take for granted...
luxuries denied to many of our countrymen” (Borderlands vii). His account
reveals how basic documents like ration cards or Aadhaar become rare and
inaccessible for communities living in border areas, highlighting the structural
inequalities that separate “mainlanders” from “borderlanders.” To quote
Damodaran “...the 250-odd families which lived in Dhanushkodi had been ignored
by successive governments. They had no electricity or any basic amenities and
not a single family had ever been issued a ration card (6).” Dhanushkodi,
located at the Southernmost tip of India, is a hauntingly beautiful reminder of
how location can both impose scarcity and confer charm. After being ravaged by a
cyclone in 1964, this once-bustling pilgrim town is now mostly deserted, with
the sea encircling its skeletal remains on three sides. The seclusion and
digital quiet of Dhanushkodi may seem like a unique vacation to tourists — a
peaceful haven from the hectic pace of the city. In an interview with the
authors (2025), Damodaran contemplates on this digital divide prevalent in such
isolated geographies:
While I do find remote places that lack
state-of-the-art facilities or social media penetration blissful and charming,
that is just my opinion. Despite my affinity for such places, I live in a big
city with all amenities just a phone call away. Similarly, for people who aspire
to live in a remote location, shifting to the countryside as a lifestyle choice
is one thing; it is a whole other matter when residents of border towns remain
ignored, forgotten, and left out of all development initiatives. I feel
government needs to focus on equally distributing wealth and access to
technology everywhere, except perhaps in eco-sensitive areas and buffer zones of
reserve forests, where those seeking solitude can take refuge. Basically, access
to technology or lack of it should be a choice and not one’s destiny. (8)
While the narrative of Borderlands
has been weaved through highlighting the divide between privileged mainlanders
and underprivileged borderlanders; the narrative of Gazing
at Neighbour runs parallel, intertwining the past and present of the
Partition of India. The book draws upon the task of partitioning India along
religious lines. The outcome, an arbitrary division, is evident in its
intergenerational impact, particularly affecting the everyday lives of those
residing in border areas. Ghosh’s narrative, therefore, is an attempt to
understand how: “...barbed wires have split families; concrete pillars have
turned neighbours into foreigners; people follow restrictions which their
countrymen elsewhere don’t, and wish sometimes silently, and sometimes aloud,
that the line didn’t exist” (3).
In his book, Damodaran reflects on these
scars of Partition as he illustrates the struggles of farmers living near the
international border fence, who must secure BSF clearance to cultivate their
land. Gatti Rajoke, home to many Partition refugees from Pakistan, is populated
by individuals unfamiliar with the local terrain. Misguided by the landscape,
these migrants have been farming on the dry riverbed of the Sutlej River,
unaware of their misplacement. Reflecting on their endless sufferings, Damodaran
remarks: “But despite such natural calamities, the tensions related to border
strife and absence of proper roads, health care or other basic amenities,
including the supply of drinking water, several families have been living here
for more than three generations (101).”
Vijayan’s Midnight’s Borders adds
another dimension to this discourse by chronicling her extensive travels across
India’s frontier regions. Her travelogue blends personal journey with political
reportage, capturing how militarisation, statelessness, and systemic neglect
shape the daily lives of border inhabitants. Through stories of cross-border
marriages, displaced families, and bureaucratic invisibility, she reveals the
precariousness of life at the margins, while critiquing dominant narratives that
paint borderlands as zones of illegality and threat.
What unites these texts is not only their
shared focus on margins and borders, but also their deliberate blending of
travel writing with ethnographic sensitivity. These works take on an
anthropological tone, using movement as a method of inquiry and storytelling.
The emphasis is not simply on places, but on people — whose lives are shaped,
restricted, and often rendered invisible by the border. Rather than viewing
borders as fixed territorial markers, the authors present them as lived
realities, complex and shifting, shaped by historical trauma, policy neglect,
and everyday resilience. Through this shift in perspective, contemporary Indian
travel writing carves out a powerful space for alternative national imaginaries
— ones that are inclusive of the voices from the edges. Whether it is
Damodaran’s documentation of infrastructure gaps and identity struggles, Ghosh’s
exploration of Partition’s long-term scars, or Vijayan’s interrogation of
citizenship and militarisation, each narrative contributes to a more nuanced
understanding of the nation. Collectively, these texts not only enrich Indian
travel literature but also serve as vital counter-narratives that unsettle
dominant ideas of national unity and progress by highlighting the lived
complexities at the borders.
This paper locates an emerging body of
work in Indian travel literature, dealing with regions and communities long been
excluded from mainstream narratives. Contemporary Indian travel writing, like
its global counterparts, tends to engage with diversified perspectives in terms
of contributing to the genre. This is reflected in the shift marked by movement
away from conventional tourist destinations toward places typically absent in
mainstream itineraries with a renewed emphasis on the journey itself. What is more significant is the observation on how
Contemporary Indian travel writing critically examines issues
of identity, belonging, and marginalization within the socio-political context
of the regions by using a postcolonial lens.
Among other perspectives, the journey has
been prioritised as an important travelling period for engaging in meaningful
interactions with fellow travellers, sharing a space irrespective of individual
differences based on divisive parameters. In addition to this, there is also
distinctiveness in the modes of travel as newer forms of travel narratives have
also moved beyond the romance of train travel to accommodate those who live in
motion, such as the truck drivers. These perspectives offer alternative ways of
seeing and experiencing the country. A closer examination of this study has
interestingly identified select writings solely dedicated to the international
border spaces. Coining the term border travelogues, this article
therefore, establishes a sub-genre within the broader corpus of travel writing.
The select travelogues critically engage with the lived experiences of the
border inhabitants and contribute to a flexible understanding of the nation and
its people through the extreme edges. Such narrative seems to keep the
geographical detailing of the border in the background while emphasising on the
lives of people which are restricted and differently structured because of the
special geography called ‘border’.
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Pamela
Pati is a Doctoral
Scholar in English at the Institute of Infrastructure, Technology, Research and
Management (IITRAM), Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Currently in the fourth year of her
Ph.D., she researches Contemporary Indian Travel Writing with a special focus on
Indian Border Travelogues. She is a recipient of the Scheme of Developing High
Quality Research (SHODH) scholarship awarded by the Government of Gujarat.
Pamela has contributed a book chapter on travel literature published by Apple
Academic Press (CRC, Taylor and Francis Group) and an article in the Journal
of Postcolonial Writing.
Dr. I
Watitula is an Assistant Professor of English at IITRAM, Ahmedabad. Her research
focuses on Contemporary Literature from North-East India, Indigenous
Literatures, and Indigenous Feminism. She also explores Digital Humanities and
has actively engaged in collaborative projects in this field. Her work has
appeared in leading journals including Journal of Postcolonial Writing,
English: Journal of the English Association (OUP), JCLA, South
Asian Review, Sahitya Akademi, and Higher Education for the Future
(Sage). In 2018, she received the Zubaan-Sasakawa Peace Foundation Research
Grant under the Fragrance of Peace Project. She earned her Ph.D. in Literature
from IIT Indore.