Did not finish.
This book is terri-ble! She went to India 11 years prior to the events in the book and she starts off by ranting about how much she hates India and will never go back. She ends up going back to live there as her boyfriend is working as a journalist. She just complains about everything, is so negative and has a holier than thou attitude. I read some of the reviews to see if her attitude gets better but apparently it doesn’t so I stopped reading it.

I've always found the cover of this book fun. A friend offered it to me so I accepted; even though I've been trying to bring Mount TBR down not add to it. I almost bailed when the first scene was a description of being sick in airport bathroom in India. I slogged on but it didn't get any better. Way to many descriptions of bodily functions. My criteria for a travel story is that it should inspire you to travel, this one doesn't. Also the author is clearing unhappy in her relationship and tries to fix this by bouncing from one religious experience to the next. I just don't enjoy the whole I'm i don't have to worry about money/have no real problems/I've got to find myself genre.

Last winter, during my Rajasthan tour, I came across a small bookstore in Jaisalmer and, I kid you not, copies of this book were more than half of the total books that the store had to offer. Surprised I asked, "Why?" "Foreigners love this book, Sir. I sell 10-15 of this every month," was the smiling response from the seller. An interesting title, an attention grabbing cover and an excitement to read about my idiosyncratic country from a visiting foreigner's perspective motivated me to grab a copy myself.

But, now when I read it, disappointment, anger, sadness, pity hover my mind.

I am fine with the author's exaggeration of her painful experiences encountering a completely different culture than of her own (what is wrong with a bit of exaggeration if it can generate some laughs), but, what pains me that not only the author was myopic to the myriad diversities that India has to offer, but extremely shallow when it comes to understanding the nuances of Indian way of life. Complete disdain for a culture and superiority feeling were evident from every observation of hers. You might think I react so as she talks about something which is closer to me, my life. But, No. As a highly critical person myself who finds faults in most things in my country, however, I refuse to accept the evaluation of a civilization on superficial and condescending judgement of chance encounters.
It is not what India is.
I understand some of the foreigners, coming to India, would be dismayed by chaos and filth, that they haven't seen in their places in ages and could relate to some of the anecdotes in the book, but definitely, one needs to look deeper and find life in those chaos and filth.
I would definitely not recommend this book anyone. Not even for laughs.

I have to say, it was a struggle for me to get through this book. I acknowledge that I am biased, and reading a Western portrayal of life in India is bound to make me feel defensive. The Western media has a tendency to seek out the bad, the dirty, the freakish, and the vulgar in other societies and to show only that side to their people. I acknowledge that my own exposure to life in India is whitewashed and my own view are probably too idealistic. However, the book is so thoroughly negative in tone throughout that it might be difficult to read even otherwise.

Knowing from the start that the author would come to think of India as a home led me to believe that this tone might change at some point. But toward the end of the book, she notes, "After nearly two years traveling India's spiritual supermarket, I'm still a self-absorbed, selfish, pathetic, pessimistic bitch..." It's hard to find her a sympathetic character, and hard to enjoy the book. She focuses too often on bad smells and bodily functions, both in literal descriptions and in her metaphors, and it gets old quickly.

Her wanderings from place to place and religion to religion, while supposedly in an effort to find a faith she can believe in, are done in an an extremely skeptical way; she goes in ready to not only dismiss what she finds but also to make a mockery of the religious practice, its followers, and the Westerners who are testing it out (with whom she doesn't really identify, despite doing exactly the same thing).

Overall, I found this book frustrating to read and I would not recommend it to friends.

Crappy condescending racist bullshit.

I had to discuss whether Macdonald portrayed India as either a "begging bowl or a spiritual wonderland" (in the words of Deepa Mehta) and I can honestly say that she captured both the stereotypes and managed to be sort of truthful about India at the same time. But she did remark a lot on the dirtiness and unsanitary living conditions of the civilians a bit too much, such as Indian people farting and burping unashamedly or whatever. Like everyone does it, deal with it. I don't know, I just don't feel comfortable that western person's views on the eastern religion and culture is used as reading material for a class. She literally spends a day or two at a couple of temples, experimenting with most of the religions in India, and claim to be changed or saw a glimpse of the spiritual world or whatever nonsense, and then says that she can't commit to a religion. Like okay, bye Felicia.

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book or not -- I had mixed feelings much of the way through it, in part because of the stark reality of India and in part because of the never-ending quest for religious learning. In the end, though, I have to say that I appreciated India and the book more than I expected. A friend of mine who is first generation Indian-American was surprised when I said I wanted to visit India -- "Why? It's a crowded mess of poverty and crime and dirt." And I have worried about that fact -- I hate bugs and dirt and crowds and what I know of the "sanitary facilities" is incredibly unappealing. This book did not gloss over any of that, but managed to find the color and life and vibrant passions that make India seem like such a land of enchantment. It was an honest look and a good balance. I think that if I should ever venture to India, I would need an experienced guide like the author in order not to freak out like her friend Emma did when faced with crowds of lepers and cockroaches and bawdy bodily-functions publicly indulged.

The quest for religious learning took some getting used to, but in the end it really worked for me, because it helped to explain the giant gumbo that is India -- a land of many gods and many religions, all fighting for power and trying to co-exist at the same time. Given that the author started out an atheist (whereas I have already largely made peace with my faith), it was appropriate that she try a bit of everything. And by sampling all of the religious facets of India she was able to see and understand all of the elements of the nation's character -- how gut-wrenching poverty sits side-by-side with the gaudy extravagance of Bollywood, how people seek purification by bathing in the most polluted river on earth, how female goddesses are revered in a place where female children are left to die for the crime of being born and women are incinerated on the funeral pyres of old dead husbands who never treated them well enough to be truly mourned for themselves.

All in all, an enlightening read in many ways and one that will make me think long and hard before I visit India.

I was entertained by this book, but there's a whole bunch of things I don't really like about travelogues like this. Perhaps most obviously, Westerners going to India and getting spiritual has been a cliche at least since the hippies, and if it wasn't before, Elizabeth Gilbert cornered the market on this. So while this was fine, I resent the fetishizing of the East in this Orientalist kind of way. The people who do this tend to reject their own Christian traditions in favor of Eastern ones that they don't even really seem to understand very well since they are diverse, contextually-situated, rich, etc. (I guess that was the whole point of Swami Vivekananda was trying to distill some Hindu principles and present them to Western audiences, so it's possible I'm being a bit too harsh...)

I think some people could stand to relax a little bit on their religious views and admit some room for doubt and mystery, but I think a corresponding issue is a lack of seriousness with some in this sort of postmodern remixing of all religions and taking only the feel-good parts of them while rejecting all of the costs. It treats religion merely as a therapeutic-pragmatic "well, does it work for the person?" attitude, which certainly is one useful way to think about faith traditions, but runs the risk of just feeling like a buffet of platitudes and contradictory impulses that somehow all are magically compatible in a New Age dialectical monistic soup. I would much rather see someone sincerely engaging within a single tradition to understand well its theology and history and devotional practice, rather than the dilettantism that is in vogue. Picking and choosing ends up as a sort of hyperindividualized custom religious practice, which I think misses a lot of the benefit of practicing a faith tradition. If you are going to go individualized, then go for mysticism. But mysticism also requires a great deal of sacrifice and ascetic discipline which doesn't seem to be present for many people adopting it as a personality trait. It probably ends up as status game for many and the worst of all permutations. It can be both isolated from community and shallow.

I admit I am rather biased. I would in many cases prefer to see a thoughtful and sincere practicing member of any given faith rather than someone, in the words of the great David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap, "using bits and pieces of whatever eastern philosophy would drift through my transom". And the way this book is structured triggered that impulse in me.

Non-diegetic to the rest of this review, I think it'd be fascinating to read travelogues by non-Westerners to Western countries. I need to find some of those...

As far as I could tell, this was supposed to be a true story. The problem started when some of Sarah's anecdotes were just too fantastic, and clearly written in such a way as to convince her audience of jaded Westerners that the possibility of magic still exists in India. Additionally, some events were reworked to increase their impact (I would run some passages by my Indian friends to see if such claims were possible, such as a toilet cleaner calling a palm reading a "hand job"; the unanimous answer was a resounding, "Nahin!" (No!).

The result of these creative additions was that I was no longer certain which stories were true, or partly true, or entirely invented. While how Sarah decides to tell her story is just that--her decision--I felt a bit let down. If her goal was just to entertain with her tale, that is one thing. But her purpose seemed to be more than that, to tell of her spiritual journey in India, the growth she experienced as a result of sampling a number of different religions. Unfortunately, accepting her growth also means accepting her storytelling, and I just couldn't do that. While the entire story isn't fiction (I had some unlikely events confirmed by the same Desi pals), and some of the descriptive language is quite vivid and imaginative, in the end, I can't give this book a strong recommendation. Aside from the dubious adventures, some of her friends seemed more like caricatures from Bollywood films than actual human beings with whom she had spent a good deal of time.

I enjoyed listening to this book on Audible. However, the narrator's imitation of the Indian accent was ANNOYING to say the least! Being from India I was irritated with the low threshold for acceptance the author had for almost anything Indian and it was obvious that she was not in India by choice. I felt like the hatred for most things Indian that came through in the 3/4 ths of the novel was more overpowering than the weak end of where the author seems to be sad when she is finally leaving for Australia.

India as a giant spiritual supermarket! Sarah Macdonald peruses the aisles and samples the product. Jainism here, Judaism there, Hindus, Parsis, Buddhists, Sufis and Christians she samples all their wares. And the book is just about as superficial as it sounds. It is not about these religions (although Sarah does try for some depth) but about her experiences of them with some rather wacky people. Both the 'magical' gurus and the hippie-types who sit at their feet and swoon.

Sarah, like the adventuresome Australian she is, backpacks to India, has a crap time, leaves but meets an ugly old soothsayer who tells her she will come back to India and find lurrrrve. And eleven years later she comes back with her boyfriend. He works in broadcasting and is always off covering the latest insurrection and massacre with the high point being Afghanistan. So to fill in the time she becomes a spiritual tourist shopping for the 'truth'.

Now this is the interesting part. She really does see India as it seems to be, a society of great contrasts. Whether it is between rich and poor, or the religions, the languages or the cultures everyone (apart from those involved in insurrections and massacres) meaning the ordinary people, just rub along together.

She goes to ashrams, temples, 'coffee shops' in Nepal and other places of worship and attempts to learn the path about who we are and where we are going. There isn't any universal path to be found, everyone has to make their own, or not bother (me, the apatheist). Quite a lot of these spiritual homes charge a lot of money for imposing fairly punishing regimes on Westerners who would seek the truth. Religion is quite an industry in India.

One of the funniest parts of the book is detailing the various people she meets. I would never have guessed that the stonedest least spiritual tourists around are the Israelis who are considerably less precious than the sort of hippie type travellers she meets in the Hindu ashrams (think Shantaram).

The most fanatical people are the Parsis, known as Zoroastrians in Iran, who are the most exclusive of exclusive types in the world. No one can convert and no child that doesn't have both parents from the Parsee community is accepted. The group she met saw the preservation of that exclusivity as the most important part of their culture and are willing to accept the problems of inbreeding that results from this. Their other preoccupation is breeding vultures - pollution seems to be killing them off - so that their dead can be eaten by them in their traditional funeral rites.

The book took me about six months to read. I just couldn't get into it. I kept it next to the stove in the kitchen and read a few pages when I had to stir something and as it went on it got more interesting. It helps that the author can write well. It helps that she has a very strong, somewhat bolshy, opinionated personality, very Australian, and it was more Sarah MacDonald, the author, who sucked me. I wanted to know what she would do next much more than I cared about 'the next'.

So three and a half stars rounded up to four because Sarah is just the sort of person you'd love to go out to lunch with and amid the chatter she would tell you about how these a-mazing people she met in India are coming to stay and would you like to meet them? How about dinner... Oh yes, you think, I'll bring a couple of bottles.

This book is absolutely hilarious and hugely readable, loved it.