The Occidental Tourists was my 'Pandemic Project'. I have always kept a journal on my trips away and a few years ago I decided to publish the then most recent one on Kindle. It wasn't a success as it was ill thought through. I considered the entire trip interesting and left nothing out. But it was only interesting to me and dead wood to most anyone who wasn't there at the time. After that I hit upon the idea of cherry picking stories and events from every trip and putting them together in one volume. I thought that The Occidental Tourists was a very clever play on words and I was the first to think of it. Yeah, right. But even after realising how very wrong I was about that, I stuck with it. There are many 'Occidental Tourists', but only mine has 'Subcontinental Sojourns'. To be honest, it has met with the same success as it's predecessor. However, whereas I look at my first attempt see the holes. I am still proud of this tome regardless. Why not give it a whirl? What's the worst that could happen?

Get it here

The Occidental Tourists

is an anthology of tales culled from my trips to India. They are a mixture and I hope that they are interesting, funny, weird, or any combination of the three. There is also the poignant variety. The latter are not so much fun but necessary to tell the tale. The stories go together to form a larger overall narrative of a relationship in flux. India has as many facets as it has Gods and the multifarious deities range from the benign and the benevolent to the malicious and the malevolent. Societies the world over are capable of reaching those same extremes and becoming aware of this in India has had an effect on me as profound as my initial encounter with the subcontinent back in 1996. The Occidental Tourists is an attempt to entertain and amuse as well as provoke thought as it charts the journey through my relationship with India over the past quarter century and where it may go in the future.

The image above is a cover design for the book that was never physically published. It was never £39.99. PIMU stands for Price I Made Up.

The Occidental Tourists is available on the kindle store only -