Bill Aitken (traveller)
Encyclopedia
William McKay Aitken is a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
born, naturalized India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n travel writer. He is the author of a number of books about India, its mountain
Mountain
Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...
s and its spiritual core.
Bill Aitken studied comparative theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
at the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
and hitch-hiked to India in 1959. Ever since, he has undertaken various trips around and across India, on motorbikes and steam
Steam
Steam is the technical term for water vapor, the gaseous phase of water, which is formed when water boils. In common language it is often used to refer to the visible mist of water droplets formed as this water vapor condenses in the presence of cooler air...
railway, through India's Deccan and around Nanda Devi
Nanda Devi
Nanda Devi is the second highest mountain in India and the highest entirely within the country ; owing to this geography it was the highest known mountain in the world until computations on Dhaulagiri by western surveyors in 1808...
. Bill Aitken's writings are characterized by a free-wheeling description of his travels, interspersed with intimate details of the land and its people, and their religious beliefs.
He lives in the hill station
Hill station
A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The term was used mostly in colonial Asia , but also in Africa , for towns founded by European colonial rulers as refuges from the summer heat, up where temperatures are cooler...
of Mussoorie
Mussoorie
Mussoorie is a city and a municipal board in the Dehradun District of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is located about 35 km from the state capital of Dehradun and 290 km north from the national capital of New Delhi...
in the Lower Western Himalaya; the surrounding region has provided much of the material for his writings. He is the long-time companion of Prithvi Bir Kaur, the widowed former Maharani of the erstwhile Sikh
Sikh
A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism. It primarily originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of South Asia. The term "Sikh" has its origin in Sanskrit term शिष्य , meaning "disciple, student" or शिक्ष , meaning "instruction"...
princely state
Princely state
A Princely State was a nominally sovereign entitity of British rule in India that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule such as suzerainty or paramountcy.-British relationship with the Princely States:India under the British Raj ...
of Jind
Jind
Jind is a town in Jind District, Harayana state, India.It is one of the oldest districts of Harayana. It is one of the first Sikh Kingdoms. It lies in central Haryana and is the fourth district of the Jat belt .The city is beautiful...
.
Works
- Seven Sacred Rivers, (Penguin Books India), ISBN 0-14-015473-6
- Divining the Deccan - A Motorbike to the Heart of India, (Oxford, 2002), ISBN 0-19-566350-0
- Footloose in the Himalaya, (Delhi, Permanent Black, 2003), ISBN 81-7824-052-1
- The Nanda Devi Affair, (Penguin Books India), ISBN 0-14-024045-4
- Touching Upon the Himalaya: Excursions and Enquiries, (Indus Books, New Delhi, 2004), ISBN 81-7387-169-8
- Exploring Indian Railways, (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1994), ISBN 97801956637618
- Branch Line to Eternity, (Penguin Books India), ISBN 0-14-100537-8
- Sri Sathya Sai Baba - A life, (Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd.), ISBN 0-670-05807-6
- Riding The Ranges: Travels on My Motorcycle (ISBN 0-14-026804-9)
Further reading
- Review of Footloose in the Himalaya By Bill Aitken, The Telegraph (India), , April 11, 2003 |
- Maneesh Pandey. Rail tourism needs to be put on track. The Times of India, 28 Jul 2001. Quotes Aitken as a travel writer.