The Icelandic Voyage Where Fire and Ice Meet by Dr.Amit Gupta is a travelogue. Honestly speaking, I have never read any travelogue so at times I have a notion that travelogues are boring and exaggerated but when I picked up this book,all my notions came to a halt. This book gave birth to a new perspective in me.
Cover- The cover is breathtaking and you will instantly fall for it. The color scheme is kept in mind about the place the author wants to talk about it, ie, Iceland. The hardcover looks dazzling and to add more, this is my first ever hard covered book.
Title- The main title The Icelandic Voyage purely makes sense while the sub title gives us a glimpse of a unexpectable thing, where fire meets ice. As it denotes the ice and volcanic eruptions.
Travel books strive on cliches. And mostly it is a single man on a ‘journey of self-discovery’, phew. Well, not this one. The author along with his family decides to take a trip to the outlandish Iceland. It was a huge task first of allto convince his family to side-line a trip to the sandy beaches of Italy or France and linger upon the idea of a country which has active volcanoes. After a delayed nod, they set on a road trip to discover the most unusual tourist destinations in the world. So, what sets Iceland apart, the black beaches, or a crashed plane turned into a tourist spot, or the city where the population of people can be counted on your fingers? Or the non-existence of mosquitoes & McDonalds. They don’t coincide but you cannot find one in Iceland. Read their journey about how the author faces his family’s indolent behaviour and how he deals with it throughout the whole trip. And also, take a glimpse of a rendition of ‘Gerua‘, Gupta family style.
The person who wrote this travelogue is a Doctor who is not a writer but a traveller who conveyed his journey beautifully. The way with which he described about the incidents, places and even the safety rules makes it amazing. The traveller surprised us as he took his family to Iceland. It is difficult to handle kids at such a place but the traveller managed it. I loved the witty dialogues in between. The scene where the family refuses to get up and at the safety rules, he remarks, “This place is really safe, if you leave your wife in the car, you will find her there.” This made me laugh out loud.
The descriptions were fantabulous and the use of pictorial form is the main highlight of the book. The pages flow fantasmagorically like a river. The language is simple and easy to understand. The use of guidelines, pre planning and a lot of research makes it enjoyable for the family. The other fantastic feature of this book is when the traveller mentions about Gerua Song by Shahrukh Khan. This can surely attract us and even the readers to grab this piece. The book is written from soul hence, I just couldn’t look at the technicalities.I wish all the best to the traveller and maybe it gives birth to a traveller in many others including me.
Grab your copies from :http://www.amazon.in/Icelandic-Voyage-First-2016/dp/9386148145/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8
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