What differentiates this book on the stunning land called Ladakh from its counterparts is that here, words match the pictures, and vice versa

ALL MY life, I’ve been torn between loving travelogues and hating them. I love them because they take me places whenever I’m unable to go places myself. And I hate them because, no matter how well they’re written, they can’t really show me how the places they talk about look. Even when there are pictures, there are only a few. And much as I appreciate my imagination, it’s a little difficult to satisfy wanderlust, even temporarily, by only imagining how a certain place looks.

So naturally, I loved the very idea of Ladakh: A Photo Travelogue, with pictures and text by Sohini Sen, when I first came across it as I browsed the travel books on amazon.in. Finally a travelogue that would let my imagination rest! But then, after I ordered the book, waited impatiently for the email that announced it was out for delivery, answered the door, signed for my parcel, tore open the wrappings and settled down to read it, I found that I loved it for several other reasons, too.

First, the sheer quality of the book stunned me. I can’t say what I was expecting, but it was certainly not this solid book of glossy paper, just as good to touch as the Asterix and Tintin comic books I adore.

Next, I was swept away by the pictures. I had wondered, when I ordered the book, how small the pictures would be. I knew by looking at the cover image, which is a collage of the pages inside, that this wouldn’t be the standard photo book of one large image on a page, faced with an extended caption on the next page. No, this book looked exactly like those Asterix and Tintin comic books I adore, only with photographs, not drawings.

But small photos of Ladakh, a land of grand, sweeping landscapes and spectacular structures? That wouldn’t make sense. So it was a delight to see that the images were used well — big when they needed to be big, and small when details were required.

Most of all, I loved reading the book. It had everything I wanted in a travelogue — descriptions, explanations, humour and the author’s point of view. The photographs take you through Ladakh, and the conversation between the travellers, in speech bubbles, lets you experience the places they visit exactly the way they did.

Over five chapters, covering Leh, Phyang, Nubra Valley, Pangong Tso and Tso Moriri, you travel right alongside Sen and her companion as they acclimatise to the height, check out curio shops with puppets featuring the face of a Hindu God on one side and a Tibetan God on the other, attend the annual festival organised by the Phyang Monastery (where Sen shoots photos not only of the carefully choreographed dance by the monks, but also a very small tourist trying to out-dance the monks), freeze at Moriri Lake, take a camel safari, and come across a posing marmot that clearly wants to be a supermodel

Like the best travelogues, this book provides not just backgrounds and contexts to the journey, but also a lightness that is the only way to bring out the joy of travelling. You must be warned though: Ladakh: A Photo Travelogue contains some jokes so bad that you want to bang your head against the wall — and also laugh your head off. So do please get a grip on your head before your begin reading it. And do please take your time, too. This is a book with lots to savour — fantabulous pictures as well as gripping (and sometimes hilarious) text. Go get it.