Untamed India - A Victorian Woman’s Travel Adventure

I have always read negative about India in Victorian British books. Thanks to the author for writing good things about India and Indians. It follows the odyssey of a Victorian woman in India. She has described about India in 1800s. She has described India’s rituals, traditions and customs. She has shared about Pujas and India’s festivals. She has described how Indians died between 1769-1770 due to famine because the British East India Company replaced much of the food crops in this region with indigo plants (for dyeing fabrics) and opium poppies (for creating drug addicts). She had described about high taxation and debt. She has described about Sati Pratha in India. She had described about Arab Culture. Every Indian used to wear gold jewellery in India and the clothes were finest in India. The breakfast was laid in a fine service of gold and silver. She has described about deities and their importance. She has described how gold and silver was used in Indian native dresses and then later on in European ladies gowns.

I believe the arrival of the British east India company in India was beginning of all the misfortunes. Because they wracked India with high taxation. And replaced much of the food crops in this region with indigo plants (for dyeing fabrics) and opium poppies. I read this was a thousand pages long so I am not sure how much they have shared but thank you for publishing this book.

Thank you Author, Publisher, and Netgalley

Absolutely astonishing: that's what the diaries of Fanny Parks are from 1822-1839 as she, the wife of a bureaucrat in the British East India Company, travels from Wales to India. The things she saw and survived --!

The travel journals she wrote are fascinating, as this woman, not a Colonializing missionary, but still a white woman of the British Empire, recounts her experiences of cultures and experiences that seem as alien to her as any science fiction. She becomes an intrepid mostly independent traveler, crossing distances by boat, by horseback, and, cringingly, on the shoulders of native servants in a closed carriage. Her curiosity and interest in the religions and social mores grows across her stay in India, until she is called home at the death of her father.

What's missing –– and this might not in fact be a vital omission, given how rich the source material is –– is a framework. The book includes solid chunks the travel journals along with illustrations that Fanny Parks herself commissioned or created for the purpose of publication. But how much of that original is presented here?

Perhaps the final copy –– this ARC was given by NetGalley in exchange for my unfettered opinion ––will include an introduction by the editor, or an explanation of what journal entries were NOT included, or even a larger picture of Fanny Parks' (or Parkes', the spelling seems fluid in the historical record) life.

Regardless, these travel journal excerpts present vivid and remarkable scenes of a lost time.

This is a newly edited version of the diaries of Fanny Parks who lived in India for over 20 years from 1822. While her husband worked, Fanny travelled around India alone, by boat and on horseback, sometimes not seeing her husband for years at a time.
What makes these diaries so readable is her very modern voice. The diaries are not written to make herself sound grand or important, but are very informal and relaxed. There are no boring pompous passages, just the interesting bits, told in a simple and straight forward way. They are incredibly readable, and Fanny is exceptionally good company. She is interested in her surroundings, has an enquiring mind and tolerant personality. It isn't all plain sailing - literally when she travels up the Ganges by boat, but nothing is turned into a drama. She comes across as completely down to earth, and a lot of fun.
If only the diaries of male explorers were so much fun to read.

I think we will have this be one of the titles for our senior bookclub. Definitely will be ordering for my library.

Previous to this book I didn’t know she ever existed, but I will tell you something, what a strong woman, at the times this takes part, women were kind of invisible and Fanny Parks is not invisible, she observed what was around her with wonder but sometimes also with repulse… but in a way that you don’t really feel that because she was only describing what was around. This book is written as a diary, you have the dates and what took place that day. I started reading this book after reading for my children “Around the world in 80 days” the part where Phileas Fogg is travelling across India, and it was really trilling to read this diary after that, it was like a profound dive into Indian culture and into some bizarre actions, but if you read this diary you’ll understand what I mean.

I really recommend this book to everyone who likes historical books, and even more knowing that this was the recount of true events, I only wish I had a more easier way to access a glossary of terms used that I didn’t know what they meant (like moonshee, eventually I understood that this person was like a judge) but having hyperlinks can be super useful, the drawings are absolutely gorgeous and lifelike, and I imagine that the final version of this e-book will look even better than the ARC that I was provided.

Thank you NetGalley and BooksGoSocial, for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

This book is a reprint of a much larger volume. I tried to get my hands on a physical copy of this version, but I have not been able to. I would not recommend the larger volume because it might be too cumbersome to get through, and that would mean missing out on the tidbits that are littered throughout this diary.
Every personal description of a time and place is heavily altered by a person's life and status. I stopped saying my reviews were unbiased because I realised that was nearly impossible. There is always a bias - either towards or against a genre or even author based on prior experience etc. I state this upfront because this book is a collection of diary entries of the wife of a British civil servant. She has time and money on her hands while she is in a country that is technically not hers. She swings between admiration and deriding of the traditions or systems in place around her, but sometimes, reading between her words, a lot of actual data can be gained. She has even included drawings of some of the people and things (sometimes, she does not differentiate much between the two, only sometimes).
For the most part, the author is excited about life in a new country and meeting new people, and she seems to have a lot of autonomy in travelling by herself while in India.
I found out some interesting facts, which was what compelled me to check if I could find the physical copy. One was that temperatures hit 35 degrees in my home city, even in the 1800s. Although it was not for long, it seemed to be on par with expectations for that time! This entire story is from a rarer viewpoint than other more serious texts people might have written during that time (although I do not have the experience to verify that thought).
Not all of the content will anger an average Indian reader, although there are moments when she is part of a larger system and thinks what they are doing is okay.
I cannot go into any more details, but this book was fascinating to me, and I think people with some familiarity with the places and people she mentions will get more out of this book than others will. My rating is slightly lower than it could have been because I was not as interested in some of the things that were brought into focus in this edition as I was in other things.
I will continue to keep an eye out for this version of the book.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.