The Master 038; Mussoorie

With time, this pursuit for Menezes and others like her, acquired greater depth. To pay homage not just to a writer, but also to the figments of his imagination as he traversed the ordinary dirt road in pursuit of great adventures. The hope being, perhaps, that the dedicated pilgrim would be imbued with some of the magic dust that enabled the creation of a beloved masterpiece. Hence the careful reconstruction of J.R.R. Tolkien8217;s Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand where it was filmed; a chilly weekend in Whitby, England-Bram Stoker8217;s setting for Dracula; the Paris-Rome-London-New York-Scotland expedition for fans of Dan Brown8217;s The Da Vinci Code, and for readers like Asha Desai, 32, New York City8217;s faddish Sex and the City tour which tracks the stylistic inspirations of author Candace Bushnell.

Similarly, Alexander McCall Smith8217;s five-part series of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which portrays Botswana as serene, beautiful and distinct from the rabble-rousing deprivation readers have come to associate with the Continent, has inspired considerable interest among literary tourists. A BBC documentary was filmed in the country, which may also be the setting for the film version of the book whose rights have been bought by The English Patient director Anthony Minghella. Amateur photographer Maya Singh, 23 says her favourite vacation was to South Africa, because it brought to life Alan Paton8217;s Cry, The Beloved Country. 8220;Although South Africa has changed considerably since the 1940s when the book is set, visiting the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal and Johannesburg, gave me an almost cinematic experience of the story. It made me want to make reading and travel a simultaneous experience.8221;

US university student Saras Panday, 23, says the lure of a literary pilgrimage is not difficult to understand. 8220;More than ten years after I was introduced to William Faulkner, he8217;s still my favourite writer,8221; says Panday, 8220;Absalom, Absalom! Is one of my favourite novels 8212; and I think As I Lay Dying has the funniest short chapter in world literature: Vardaman: My mother is a fish. So I plan on visiting Rowan Oaks, Faulkner8217;s home in Oxford, Mississippi, this summer when I drive across country from California to Alabama, and will also stop at other places he mentions in his novels.8221;

But this dedicated hobby, like others, is best introduced young. Parents wearied of educational excursions to the Vatican, are bundling their offspring to the Louvre of literary vacations, England. Aradhana Kapoor8217;s holidays with her children aged 6, 9 and 11 have become 8220;point and shoot8221; tours. 8220;We follow the path we think a particular character might have taken 8212; like Dudley Dursley and Harry Potter in the London Zoo 8212; and when we spot the place we think inspired a scene, everyone takes out their cameras and shoots it for posterity!8221; Such vacations 8212; which have, in the past, trailed E. Nesbit in England and Heidi while in Switzerland 8212; are instructive entertainment, says Kapoor. More importantly, they allow her to feel closer to her children than a summer spent describing the compulsions of Renaissance art.

In India, a weekend to Mussoorie to meet writer Ruskin Bond, Calcutta for Satyajit Ray8217;s Feluda stories, and the village of Thul near Mumbai for Anita Desai8217;s The Village by the Sea are potential pilgrimage sites for young readers with an exploratory streak. But the fact is, no matter where you go it8217;s more than likely that you will trespass on territory a writer at some point in the past, present or future has or will use as the background for the skeins of his story. And it is this extraordinary feeling that makes you want to turn to literature not to a travel agent for that perfect pilgrimage.