The Travel Bug

Mehvash Amin

Our editor-in-chief Mehvash Amin talks to Shueyb Gandapur about his recently published travel memoir.

Shueyb Gandapur has many avatars, but the one he is undoubtably most passionate about is that of the traveler. His first travel memoir, Coming Back: The Odyssey of a Pakistani through India, is not just written with a sense of evocative immediacy and wry humour, but is also accompanied by photographs he took throughout his journey and with his own painting on the cover. I asked him a few questions about it all.

Shueyb Gandapur’s Coming Back: The Odyssey of a Pakistani through India

MA. You love traveling, how many countries have you visited in​ all?

​SG: As of now, the count of countries I have traveled to is 107, including the country of my birth, for isn't that the first country we all visit upon arriving into the world? It was the only country I had seen ​for the first 25​ years of my life.  MA: ​Did you visit them all on a Pakistani passport?

​SG: Except for th​e last 21 countries. When I acquired British citizenship in December 2020, I started using my UK passport ​for travel and felt a world of difference in terms of ease of ​c​rossing borders.   MA: ​What do you think was the linchpin that motivated your love of travel?

​SG: My profound interest in the outside world had been quietly nurturing itself within me since my first vague understanding of the concepts of nations and nationalities​ developed. I used to examine maps, collect stamps and coins, and memorise the names of world capitals as a ​child​.​ It must have been motivated by the desire to get a glimpse of the vast, mysterious, and infinitely fascinating world that I wanted to go out and explore. When I got the opportunity to travel internationally later in life, ​I​ think it was the denouement of a passion that had been there in my subconscious somewhere. I didn't realise when it turned from occasional opportunities for work travel to an insatiable yearning for heading to a new country at the slightest opportunity.  MA: Is this the first book you​'ve written on your travels?

​SG: Yes, Coming Back: The Odyssey of a Pakistani through India is my very first book. 

Floral inlaid stone motifs at Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb in Agra

MA: I remember ​t​hat we used an excerpt of this book in The Aleph Review… Did you​ complete this book after giving us that piece? 

​SG: Indeed, it was after that excerpt of my travelogue appeared in The Aleph Review that I started giving a serious thought to converting the manuscript into a book. Once I reached a deal with a publisher in the UK, I revisited the original text, expanded it, remodeled it, added photos, made a painting for the cover and gave it the final shape in which it has been published. MA: Why is your first book on your Indian travels?​

SG: My visit to India was very special for me, emotionally and spiritually. It was the coming to fruition of a long held dream, the realization of which I had considered very unlikely until it happened. While exploring India, I felt like I was following a trail that I had envisioned in my mind often. Because of the breadth of emotions I experienced there, I felt compelled to put them in writing. And when I started doing so, I did not know it would take the shape of a book one day.

MA: Now that one book has been published, are you planning to do more travel books? ​

SG: I hope so. I have many ideas about the themes of future books. I might not do more destination specific books, but I think there is a lot in my travel experiences and observations that should be put together for readers having interest in travel and encounters with people from around the world.  MA: You are also an artist, calligraph artist, translator and photographer. How do you​ manage to do so much with a day job?

SG: I wish I could split my life into several parallel tracks, so each could be dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in a single field. I delve into these activities because I feel there's a degree of skill I possess in each of them. I don't think I am doing justice to any of th​e​se passion​s, but I do a bit of everything as and when I can. It's a flow that's either determining its own direction or is completely directionless. 

Guards and welcoming murals painted outside a doorway in Benaras

MA: The country that surprised you the most?

SG: It's not an easy question to answer, but today I want to say that that country is Italy. The surprises of Italy are never ending. I have visited the country several times and been to the northern, southern and central parts of it; every region I have been to has wowed me. The unbelievable richness of art from Milan to Palermo, the magnificent ancient architecture of Rome and Florence, the world famous cuisine of Naples, one of its kind city of canals Venice and its carnivals, the beautiful villages on the coastal cliffs of Amalfi and Cinque Terre, the sea-facing central piazza of Trieste... and if all of this man-made brilliance was not enough, the country is also endowed with stunning nature. One just wonders how all of this is concentrated in a single country.

MA: Have you traveled extensively within Pakistan and if so, do you think you have​ material for a book there?​

SG: I have been to the major cities, the four provinces and northern areas. Having said that, since Pakistan is where I was born and raised, the stories that stayed with me are less centred around destinations, and more on personal accounts from various stages of my life that I spent here. MA: Would you write any other book besides a travel book? Do you think you would ever​ write a novel?

S​G: I have been an avid reader of fiction, and my travel writing might have drawn some inspiration from my favourite fiction writers, in terms of style and expression. I don't possess a very fertile imagination to cook up stories, but I want to write about the places I have known, the experience of growing up and the life I have lived. It may come out in the shape of a memoir or a novel or something else, who knows.

Shueyb Gandapur in Positano, Amalfi Coast, Italy

First published in the UK by Kantara Press. The Pakistan edition was published by Book Corner, Jhelum.