[.ca] Goa, and the Blue Mountains: Or, Six Months of Sick Leave (ISBN 1589760387)

If India were a pizza.......:
Richard Burton, the famous, 19th century British traveller, started his career in India, but is mainly known for his works on Arabia and Africa. One of his earliest works, this book covers a period when he went on sick leave from his post in Sindh (now part of Pakistan) to the Nilgiri Hills in southern India. True to later form, Burton did not travel there by the usual route, but took a small coastal sailing ship down to Goa, stopped there for a look, then continued down to Malabar (part of India's Kerala state today), from where he travelled overland to Ootacamund, a "hill station" in the present state of Tamilnadu. The University of California Press reproduced his book with all its original spellings of Indian words, its early 19th century jokes and puns, and English words long since gone out of fashion. No doubt India fascinated Burton's inquiring mind and he looked into many subjects not ordinarily found in the genre of Indian travel writing produced between 1830 and 1930 by a myriad Englishmen and some English women as well. As someone who knows a bit about India, and particularly Goa, I would say he was not all that accurate. He did notice that Goan Christians remained Indian in most ways and that they were divided by caste like the Hindus, from whom they had been converted. However, his picture of the caste structure in Goa is not accurate, nor were his observations of Goan life anything more than those of a tourist. When Burton arrives in Malabar, he switches tone for some reason and supplies the reader with vast amounts of information culled from various reports or books, leaving almost no personal impressions. He reverts to his own observations as he climbs up towards Ootacamund. I like travel books very much and long looked forward to reading this one. I was disappointed. It reminded me of a scene I once saw on an Australian TV comedy show. A chef pulls out a perfect pizza from an oven. You can see the cheese, the salami, the mushrooms, the beautiful crust. Mmm. The chef says, "And here's our pizza"--- and suddenly sneezing hugely right into it----"with a special mozzarella sauce !" Burton wrote what could have been a very interesting book, never mind accuracy. But his sneering, racist attitudes of contempt for everyone and everything, his total willingness to enforce his will on Indians with kicks and punches, his constant professions of boredom, and his scorn for each person he meets, even his own countrymen, cover the travel with a disgusting sauce, even though he may have been typical of his times. (and one should not condemn, blah, blah, blah) I must conclude that this book is not for everyone, only for the truly determined or for those who wish to research the author. For that latter purpose, the book is no doubt revealing.