What to read on your travels in Nepal?

---

Every traveller needs to find ways of occupying themselves during the many hours of down-time that they inevitably have to put up with on the road. An obvious portable source of amusement is a book.

But printed books can be a problem. They're heavy for a start, and in dimly lit hotel bedrooms, you may also need to use a torch.The arrival of e-book devices such as Kindle have made it all so much easier. Not only can they hold as many books as you could possibly need, without having to consider the issue of weight, but the battery can last up to a month, which means that one charge can last you a whole holiday. Even better, the Kindle Paper-white version is back-lit, so you don't even need a head-torch to read at night.

And what books to take with you to Nepal? I have been serialising a novel, in Travelblog, called Master of the Moon, which will be an excellent travelling companion for anyone travelling and trekkking in Nepal, or the Himalayas in general. It draws on my experiences as a UNDP volunteer in Kathmandu during its hippy heyday in the late '60s. with the people, culture and religions of Nepal at that particular time, when Nepal was being discovered by baby-boomers travelling, for the most part, overland across Asia to find themselves through experiments with religion and hasheesh.

The novel weaves together two narratives: an account of a naive young man, Frank, discovering love against the backdrop of an exotic and unspoiled Kathmandu valley, and his search for 'truth' on a pilgrimage to a holy lake in the mountains.

Mixing autobiography, a travelogue, philosophy, and fiction, Master of the Moon has something for everyone, particularly for those of you thinking of visiting the Himalayas as tourists or volunteers, who want to know more about the cultures and religions of the region.

Read the Chapters I have already published in this blog, and if you like it, you can buy the e-book version at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BJNSTLO (UK Marketplace) orhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BJNSTLO (US Marketplace) or, if you are based elsewhere,http://www.amazon.com

It only costs £1.99 or $2.99, and all the profit from sales will go towards the charitable activities of the Himalayan Education Lifeline Programme (HELP), which I set up 10 years ago. If you don't have a Kindle, you can download the novel onto an iPad using a free Kindle app.

Happy reading!

---