Humbler Than Dust: A Retired Couple Visits The Real India By Tandem Bicycle

Author - Mona Lee ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Seaboard Press was reviewed on 12-Mar-2009.

Search ISBN:0918736862 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Humbler Than Dust: A Retired Couple Visits The Real India By Tandem Bicycle Reference Book. Classifications : General AAS Qualifying Textbooks Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books Travel Writing Reference Subjects Books General Cycling Individual Sports Sports Subjects Books General AAS Cycling Individual Spo . Click the following link to view the cover of Humbler Than Dust: A Retired Couple Visits The Real India By Tandem Bicycle.

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1) Paperback Book Humbler Than Dust: A Retired Couple Visits The Real India By Tandem Bicycle by Seaboard Press. This book has some entertaining parts, but you must make sure that it´s what you´re looking for. Despite the bicycle theme - it is really about the kind of trials and tribulations that an older Anglo couple might face while traveling through India.

The book seems to center around how to avoid scary con-artists and street vendors, using telephones when you have a hearing aid and utopian concepts of socialist world government. It does have some nice philosophical discussions.

I think it would be an excellent book for people, especially older people, who have never traveled to the "developing" world and are planning to. If you are interested in bicycle travel - this is not your book.
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2) Paperback Book Humbler Than Dust: A Retired Couple Visits The Real India By Tandem Bicycle by Seaboard Press. This is simply a great read. If you´ve ever gotten off a train in a foreign city with no idea where you will sleep that night, this is your book. If you´re way too sensible to have ever gotten into that kind of situation but secretly delight in reading about how much worse it could have been if you had, this is your book. If you love lndia and its people; if you ride a tandem bike; if you have learned never to leave the U.S. without a good supply of dental floss--this is your book!

On the other hand, if you object to not being able to put a book down until you´ve finished it, probably better leave this one alone. It had me in its grip until 3 AM the night I opened it, and when I was done I had to actively resist the urge to start it over again from the beginning.

No ordinary travel story, this is an engagement with India as it really is, through the eyes of two Americans who are committed to living as global citizens. That they happen to be 60-something-ish is almost incidental to a story that reads at times like a picaresque narrative, at other times like a survival guide, and at all events is an account of people and places encountered through a powerful combination of open hearts and fortitude. India comes pouring through these pages, the real center of the book, and of the journey itself.

The writing is almost surrealistically vivid, a fitting expression of the journey and the cultural contrasts it poses even to the seasoned traveler. Lee´s narrative sets a good pace, carrying the reader along from Agra to Mumbai with a keen curiosity to find out what happens next. I could practically feel the grit in my teeth. Mona and her husband Dick are for real; idealistic enough to undertake this adventure, practical enough to survive it, courageous enough to allow it to change them. Highly recommended for all travelers, armchair and otherwise.¤

3) Paperback Book Humbler Than Dust: A Retired Couple Visits The Real India By Tandem Bicycle by Seaboard Press. Dick and Mona´s arrival by tandem bicycle in rural villages of India is like a circus come to town. Each time they stop, they are mobbed. Usually more than a hundred people close in around them. Or in this moving scene: ". . . Dick boldly usurps the left edge of the blacktop and lets two big trucks roar around us . . . Another truck waits behind honking indignantly in demand of room to pass between us and a loping camel cart whose driver gapes sideways at us in abject wonder. After all, in this corner of the world an old white couple on a bike is positively bizarre in contrast with the mundane appearance of a camel driver sitting on a mountain of burlap bags, his white turban bobbing up and down."They begin each day of their 1,000 kilometer journey not knowing what they will eat or where they will sleep that night. Lodging, if available at all, does not afford basic comforts taken for granted in many countries. Often there is no hotel, and they depend upon the kindness of strangers or camp out under the stars. On a visit to the Gandhi´s home museum Mona is inspired by a poignant quote from his autobiography. "The seeker after truth must become humbler than dust. Only then and not ´til then will he ever find a glimpse of truth." The story takes the seeker along on a series of horrendous and at the same time humorous adventures wherein truth is found in intimate encounters with life, people and culture at its humblest. The truth they gradually discover is that the beauty of life can best be attained by biking headlong into adversity. Dick Burkhart and Mona Lee are a retired couple trying to circumnavigate the globe by tandem bicycle and popularize the concept of a global parliament directly elected by the peoples of the world. Humbler Than Dust is the true story of their two-month travel adventure in India as well as their organizing escapades at the 2005 World Social Forum in Bombay. Throughout the journey they meet a host of wonderful characters who help them in many ways. They even get some help from Ganesh, the popular elephant-faced god whose spirit permeates the atmosphere of India.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 9-Apr-2009, 09187368629780918736864, 620-520-8

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