Review: One Uniquely Delightful Travelogue!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 24, 2013
Too often travel memoirs or journals become either so caught up with the author's need to explain every detail that the overall joy of travel for travel's sake gets lost. Or the author becomes a missionary to correct the flaws in the sites visited and pulls the reader along in an increasing morose journey we'd rather not take.  That is most assuredly NOT the case with JOURNEYS WITH THE CATERPILLAR. The very handsome author Shivali Das, originally from Assam, India where he was born, raised and then educated in both Delhi and Calcutta but now lives in Singapore where he is a management consultant, opens his adventure with an hilarious flavor - soliciting permission to go on holiday (not unlike Steve Jobs) with his fiancée Lobo to the relatively inexpensive but exotic destination of the Indonesian Islands of Bali, Flores, Rinca, Komodo, Sumba. Just the usual bathroom encounter where so many high level business transactions occur.From that point Shivaji and Lobo embark on one of the most entertaining, informative, wacky, and delightfully hilarious adventure/appreciations of Indonesia. Though the various island destinations are described physically to the point where they become visible to the reader's eye (and other senses!), it is the interaction with the people and their customs and their flora and fauna, their variations of cleanliness especially with respects to the loo, that take focus. These pages are filled with adventure, with information, with respect, and most of all with the joy of stepping away form the madness of the world as we live it to discover that life is truly more real elsewhere.At book's end Shivaji shares beautiful color photographs of places and specifics he has discussed. If there is a criticism of this book, (other than the fact that the cover of the book is not the least bit inviting and does not set the right tone) it would be that those maps and photos should be interspersed in the course of the book to enhance the readers appreciation for the visual beauty and humor as well as the authoritative yet wonderfully warm comedy the pervades Shivali Das' writing style. Grady Harp, August 13