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This One’s For
Africa
There is nothing like a jungle safari to get your adrenaline pumping. Meenakshi Kumar suggests a few books that will let you into the secrets of the Dark Continent.
‘Bureaucracy Is Like A Pyramid’ Bureaucrat turned author Vipul Mittra on his debut novel Pyramid of Virgin Dreams.
How does it feel to have your book published after the efforts of 10 years? It feels incredible. There was a time when I had felt that the story in my head would be lost in the cloud of work. But I kept penning down. So, even though it took me a decade, the story survived and descended on to the laptop. What is the main inspiration behind the book? My own experiences to a large extent. And the creative urge that perhaps existed before I joined the Indian Administrative Service and has lingered on till date. Did you do any research for your book? Introspection and observation I would say, rather than research. Things, stories, characters, events and fiction float around us all the time. We just have to observe, capture and take up the backbreaking journey to translate it on paper.
Don’t Look Behind You: True Tales Of A Safari Guide
Safari: Where To Go And How To Get There
By Peter Allison
By Jungle Jack
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oads of praise has been heaped on this brilliant narrative of the writer’s adventures as a safari leader in Botswana. Allison, a high-school dropout, worked for 20 years in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique. With that kind of experience, he is a repository of some funny, some incredible tales of escape and adventure in the jungle and tales of hungry lions and scary hippos. 58 MAY 2011
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n this day and age, one can go on a safari in various manners. The options are various: Hot-air ballooning, driving, canoeing, horse-back riding and elephant-back safaris. Get to know more about these in this book written by a thorough wildlife enthusiast. Jungle Jack Hanna loves animals and the wild, and this is what he effortlessly illustrates in this handbook on African safaris.
White Hunters
Rainforest Safari
By Brian Herne
By James Parry
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hen a professional hunter born in Kenya writes a book on safari in East Africa, it has to be taken seriously. What Herne has written is a virtual treasure trove of information. He travels back a 100 years and brings alive the hunting grounds of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, when they were an adventurer’s paradise. The book takes one down deep into the adventurous world of game expeditions in a wild, untamed Africa.
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his one is slightly different. It’s not about exploring the wildlife in the jungles of Africa but discovering the bewildering variety of flora and fauna in the rainforests of the world. Parry, who has studied wildlife in all continents, travels through 25 sites and reveals the natural treasure hidden in these troves. The book also looks at the indigenous people whose life is centred on the forests and the measures taken to save them.
Traveller’s Guide: Wildlife of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda By David Hosking and Martin Withers
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magine a book which features 474 species of birds, mammals, insects, trees and lizards. This guide illustrates all the flora and fauna that one is likely to encounter during the safari in the games reserves. British Hosking and Withers, wildlife and nature photographers respectively, have put together a fabulous guide with beautiful photographs, words and graphic illustrations.
Why did you choose the title Pyramid of Virgin Dreams for this novel? Bureaucracy is a pyramid. Anywhere. It is narrow from top and broad from bottom. Virgin dreams basically connote unfulfilled aspirations. So when we join any career or system, all of us have certain desires, wishes and aspirations that remain unfulfilled. As youth we all feel we are going to conquer the world. So the unconquered things are the virgin dreams. When we conjure them up vertically as we go along, it becomes the pyramid of virgin dreams. What is tough, writing or being an IAS? Writing while being in the IAS is the toughest. What’s next? No plans. There has to be a story bubbling in the brain before it can be doled out. 59