In January a group of book lovers journeyed to India as part of a Readings tour for the Jaipur Literary Festival. Here, Chris Gordon, gives us a brief glimpse of their adventure.

While the Jaipur Literature Festival was our raison d'être, India was such a long way to travel to that the 12 of us on tour also managed to fit in substantial sightseeing… And so there we were, strangers one minute and friends viewing the Taj Mahal the next. No surprise we all liked each other immediately. We were after all brought together by a common love of wine, food, adventure, and of course, books.

The Red Fort

Prior to the festival we travelled through Rajasthan and parts of North India, through Delhi, Agra and Karauli. We rode on buses, elephants, camels and tuk-tuks. We stayed at hotels that were handpicked for us by the wonderful people at Peregrine Tours. These hotels even included a palace. The Bhanwar Vilas Palace was built as a royal residence in 1938 by Maharaja Ganesh Pal Deo Bahadur when he was the ruler of Karauli and was designed in a colonial style with interiors furnished in Art Deco period furniture. We dressed in saris and drank gin by the moonlight. It was quite a remarkable evening.

Once in Jaipur, our attention moved to the Literature Festival. This is the largest literary festival in Asia-Pacific and the most prestigious celebration of national and international literature to be held in India. Over 120,000 people attend, mainly Indians, and certainly it felt like 120,000 people were listening to the Dali Lama. You could have walked on heads there were so many of us and all pleased to be there, everyone polite and interested. Other favourite speakers included Pico Iyer, Akash Kapur and one of the founding organisers of the festival, William Dalrymple. The festival encompassed an enormous range of readings and talks, with shops and cafes dotted around, all held in the one beautiful huge heritage property, Diggi Palace.

Over the five day festival we listened. We talked, we shopped and we shared. We attended live music nights, visited sites that are of historical significance to the way we live now, saw fire eaters and enjoyed some delicious dinners out, including at the place where the movie adaptation of the The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was filmed. We were lucky that the author of this book, Deborah Moggach, also spoke at the festival.

It will take some time to actually put everything we saw and learnt into perspective. To visit a place like India and come back the same person is unfair, both to that extraordinary country of paradoxes and to those that shared in the experience together.

To those that did come along on the adventure with us, thank you.

There is talk of heading to the SriLanka Literature Festival in January 2014. Do let me know if you are interested by emailing [email protected]. I’ll keep you posted.

Chris Gordon