I had read a few books
about females and their solo travelling adventures. And so, Shivya Nath enthused
me. This particular travel memoir consists of a girl, her voyage and her vivid
book, ‘The Shooting Star : A Girl, her Backpack and the World’.
It probably is of all
the places, she went to but for me, it began at home. She is after all, from
Dehradun and her first ever international travel is to Singapore. From here,
she travelled to South East Asian countries and worked at Singapore Tourism
Board. But around then, was when she started feeling that this was not the life
for her.
It talks of her life,
before she took off on her journey through Spiti, way back in 2011. Monk/Nun
for a Month, where one can try out how it would be, and she checked it out.
Solo travelling was the calling; she got on nights at Spiti.
She took off to France,
Switzerland, Germany and Italy, on her first ever Euro trip. This entire trip
was just the beginning of a journey into dreams of stars and green hills, lands,
spaces and different countries. She travelled on different modes of transport
and met different types of people. She went to Mauritius too, where she
discovered paradise! Of course, it had its scares and its fears too.
She actually began
fending for herself at Delhi, and this was a lesson for life. Shivya was in
Central Americas, and she began learning the Spanish language and tried living
with Mayans. In 2014, she stayed at a vineyard in South Australia, with a Hindi
speaking Gujarat returned Polish man. He had walked through the Ural Mountains,
finally landing in Gujarat. It was 1948, when he was put on train to England,
and where he would meet his wife and years, afterwards, he would have Shivya
staying with him in Australia!
Turkey, Bahrain, Canada
are only a few names in the shorter stories here, in India too, deserts of
Rajasthan, deep into the coastal villages in Karnataka and Goa. Of course, in
the book too, we cannot miss the bittersweet taste of chocolate, all the way from
Costa Rica. Shivya lands up in a village, deep in the rainforest. We also turn
pages of a few strangers and then we come to the strange pages of a mugging
incident.
Writing for me has been
an oddly solo journey. Am not comparing it to some of the solo travelers, I
have read but something about the essence of solo travel, appeals to me in a
way. She wanted to see the meteor showers, have a few adventures and experience
life and that’s what Shivya Nath is doing…
Read the Deccan Chronicle 's, version of this Review right here,
You can Buy the Book, right here...
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