For a Pagan Song: Travel in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan

This is Jonny Bealby's second book. In his first, he tells the sad story of the death of his girlfriend while travelling in Kashmir. Seven years later, he is again on a journey, and to some degree still learning to cope with that loss.

This journey was inspired by a book given to the author by that girlfriend. The first book he read, at age 21 - Kipling's The Man Who Would be King. A fictional book about a journey, Bealby sets out to follow the route. This book is written in ‘98, so the travel occurred shortly before - I think ‘96 based on the events being described - the same time the Taliban in Afghanistan started a drive to take power. Bealby literally moved through Afghanistan ahead of the Taliban pushed the government forces out of Kabul and took control.

The travel writing - the actual travel, the people he met, the cultural explanations and places he spent time we particularly enjoyable reading. The narrative is very personal - the author shares his concerns, his pleasure and displeasure, the awkwardness of his relationship with his travelling companion. There are however short interludes to this writing, where the author recalls moments from his life - from childhood right up to the present. These occur around once a chapter, and are from a half page to maybe 2 pages. They tend to relate to a situation current to the travel - sometime pretty loosely related. I understand what he was doing - providing depth to his person background, adding some layers of information on ‘who he is' and maybe how he got to who he is, but these seemed unnecessary, and to me detracted, and disturbed the context, so for me they didn't work.

Bealby is obviously still troubled by the loss of his girlfriend, and although this is not an overly spiritual book, he mentions it often enough that it becomes an element of the story. Other readers might appreciate that more than me, but importantly it wasn't so significant that it bothered me - although in his first book I recall it being the dominant theme.

Overall if you enjoy reading about Pakistan and Afghanistan travel, enjoy honesty in writing and the thoughts of a young(ish) British man, it is worth seeking this out. For the record, I haven't read Kipling's book on which the journey is based - it didn't effect the understanding of the book as far as I could tell, as the narrative explains the book and offers comparison.

Like his other (two) books, I have given this three stars. I read the other books in 2012 & 2013, before I wrote reviews. It would be interesting to see how they compared to this one - perhaps I will re-read them one day. This is probably 3.5 stars, so I could be generous and bump this to 4 stars, but that might do a disservice to the other books, which I only gave 3.