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Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure

3.49 of 5 stars 3.49 · rating details · 7,364 ratings · 750 reviews

In her twenties, journalist Sarah Macdonald backpacked around India and came away with a lasting impression of heat, pollution and poverty. So when an airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return to India—and for love—she screamed, “Never!” and gave the country, and him, the finger.

But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Sarah’s life...more

Paperback, 304 pages

Published April 13th 2004 by Broadway Books (first published October 1st 2002)

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Apr 27, 2013 Dorothea rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who want to travel to India

If you have a lingering, romanticized desire to travel to India, this book will cure the frack out of that.

Krishna! Does this woman tell it like it is: the pollution, trash, urine, feces and dismembered body parts clogging up the Indian landscape and water ways. Impossible traffic and hoards of desperate people pressing in on you from all sides, limping zombie lepers chasing you through dark alleys begging for coins, Indian men aggressively groping western women in public because they think all...more If you have a lingering, romanticized desire to travel to India, this book will cure the frack out of that.

Krishna! Does this woman tell it like it is: the pollution, trash, urine, feces and dismembered body parts clogging up the Indian landscape and water ways. Impossible traffic and hoards of desperate people pressing in on you from all sides, limping zombie lepers chasing you through dark alleys begging for coins, Indian men aggressively groping western women in public because they think all white women are sluts (thanks, Hollywood). I almost had several panic attacks while reading this book.

The author, Sarah MacDonald didn't just travel to India for a month or two, she lived there for a year or two and traveled around, exploring as much of India as she could: ashrams, Buddhist monasteries, the Kumbh Mela in Benares, hanging out with a Parsi family, celebrating Passover with some Israeli émigrés, attending a Hindu wedding, and a dozen other adventures in various Indian locales.

Sarah has a background in journalism and it shows. Sometimes her writing is stilted and leaves the reader wishing she would just take a bunch of ecstasy and bare her soul for Ganesha's sake. Many of Sarah's rants are hilarious and she has some good feminist sensibilities, but where was her editor? Her editor should have rung all the tears and grit from this writer's soul onto the page and really pushed this book over the top. Okay, how much more "over the top" can you get when you're an international bestseller? But not all international bestsellers are memorable (think Who Moved my Cheese versus The Unbearable Lightness of Being). I'm not saying Sarah MacDonald should have written the Australian in India version of Unbearable Lightness. I'm just saying that Holy Cow tips more toward Moved Cheese than Lightness of Being as far as having a lasting impression.

One thing that seriously drove me nuts is that there is no map of India in this book! WTF, Shiva! MAJOR oversight considering that this book is classified as "Travel - Essays & Travelogues." Seriously, Random House, give me a call.

I liked this book a lot more than I'm letting on. I might even read it again someday.(less)

19 likes · like · see review

Feb 15, 2013 Petra X rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel-adventure, 2013-reviews

India as a giant spiritual supermarket! Sarah Macdonald peruses the aisles and samples the product. Jainism here, Judaism there, Hindus, Parsis, Buddhists, Sufis and Christians she samples all their wares. And the book is just about as superficial as it sounds. It is not about these religions (although Sarah does try for some depth) but about her experiences of them with some rather wacky people. Both the 'magical' gurus and the hippie-types who sit at their feet and swoon.

Sarah, like the advent...more India as a giant spiritual supermarket! Sarah Macdonald peruses the aisles and samples the product. Jainism here, Judaism there, Hindus, Parsis, Buddhists, Sufis and Christians she samples all their wares. And the book is just about as superficial as it sounds. It is not about these religions (although Sarah does try for some depth) but about her experiences of them with some rather wacky people. Both the 'magical' gurus and the hippie-types who sit at their feet and swoon.

Sarah, like the adventuresome Australian she is, backpacks to India, has a crap time, leaves but meets an ugly old soothsayer who tells her she will come back to India and find lurrrrve. And eleven years later she comes back with her boyfriend. He works in broadcasting and is always off covering the latest insurrection and massacre with the high point being Afghanistan. So to fill in the time she becomes a spiritual tourist shopping for the 'truth'.

Now this is the interesting part. She really does see India as it seems to be, a society of great contrasts. Whether it is between rich and poor, or the religions, the languages or the cultures everyone (apart from those involved in insurrections and massacres) meaning the ordinary people, just rub along together.

She goes to ashrams, temples, 'coffee shops' in Nepal and other places of worship and attempts to learn the path about who we are and where we are going. There isn't any universal path to be found, everyone has to make their own, or not bother (me, the apatheist). Quite a lot of these spiritual homes charge a lot of money for imposing fairly punishing regimes on Westerners who would seek the truth. Religion is quite an industry in India.

One of the funniest parts of the book is detailing the various people she meets. I would never have guessed that the stonedest least spiritual tourists around are the Israelis who are considerably less precious than the sort of hippie type travellers she meets in the Hindu ashrams (think Shantaram).

The most fanatical people are the Parsis, known as Zoroastrians in Iran, who are the most exclusive of exclusive types in the world. No one can convert and no child that doesn't have both parents from the Parsee community is accepted. The group she met saw the preservation of that exclusivity as the most important part of their culture and are willing to accept the problems of inbreeding that results from this. Their other preoccupation is breeding vultures - pollution seems to be killing them off - so that their dead can be eaten by them in their traditional funeral rites.

The book took me about six months to read. I just couldn't get into it. I kept it next to the stove in the kitchen and read a few pages when I had to stir something and as it went on it got more interesting. It helps that the author can write well. It helps that she has a very strong, somewhat bolshy, opionated personality, very Australian, and it was more Sarah MacDonald, the author, who sucked me. I wanted to know what she would do next much more than I cared about 'the next'.

So three and a half stars rounded up to four because Sarah is just the sort of person you'd love to go out to lunch with and amid the chatter she would tell you about how these a-mazing people she met in India are coming to stay and would you like to meet them? How about dinner... Oh yes, you think, I'll bring a couple of bottles.
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Oct 26, 2008 Amy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008-books-read, disappointing, non-fiction, travelogue

I have to admit that I decided to read this book because it has a great cover. I should have peeked a bit inside, though, because the cliched chapter titles would have kept me away: Insane in the Membrane, Birds of a Feather Become Extinct Together, etc.

Basically, this is the memoir of a selfish Australian woman's year in India. She sees India as a filthy place full of disgusting people with intolerable cultural habits. And she spends her free time (while her husband is working in other cities o...more

40 likes · like · see review

Jul 09, 2011 Velvetink rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: india, travel, australia-new-zealand, autobiography-memoir, society-culture, religion-etc, 2011-read

Finished. 5 stars from me. Review to come.

So cold here at the moment I needed to read something about a warm place. India is on my list of places to visit before I die so till then I can't get enough books to whet my appetite. It was a pleasant surprise to find out Sarah Macdonald is Jonathan Harley's other half. He wrote "Lost in Transmission" which I liked tremendously. Harley writes about his time as ABC reporter in India & the east generally and Macdonald quit her job at Triple J & w...more

5 likes · like · see review

Apr 13, 2012 Heather rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: india, religion-spirituality

As far as I could tell, this was supposed to be a true story. The problem started when some of Sarah's anecdotes were just too fantastic, and clearly written in such a way as to convince her audience of jaded Westerners that the possibility of magic still exists in India. Additionally, some events were reworked to increase their impact (I would run some passages by my Indian friends to see if such claims were possible, such as a toilet cleaner calling a palm reading a "hand job"; the unanimous a...more

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Nov 25, 2007 Aarathi rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one

"Holy Cow" by Sarah Macdonald is the author's condescending account of time she spent in India. Her descriptions of what is actually a beautiful, rich, varied culture are narrow-minded and written in a tone that makes it clear she considers herself superior to India and Indian people. It's a shame that she didn't learn anything useful from her travels or absorb any of admirable values of Indian/Hindu culture such as acceptance, open-mindedness and respect for all beings.

Last but not least, the c...more

26 likes · like · see review

Sep 28, 2007 K. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

I enjoyed it and felt a little ashamed for enjoying it so much. The best chapter is the one about the Vipassana ten-day meditation boot-camp. I've done that, and she nailed it. The tone of the book bothers me, though. It's written from a position of comfortable privilege: an American middle-class woman survives the hardships of travel in India. I think the author genuinely responds viscerally and spiritually to India, but I'd rather read a less-mediated version of India from, say, Arundhati Roy,...more

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Lola Jhumpa Lahiri is an American middle class woman who has never lived in India.

Sarah MacDonald is an Australian woman who lived there for two years.
Oct 19, 2009 04:49am

K. I didn't know Jhumpa Lahiri had never been to India. Good point, Lola. Very good point. And yet, come to think of it, does Jhumpa Lahiri write about I...more
Oct 19, 2009 08:01am

Lola Lahiri's a great writer. Everything I've read by her has been about Americans of Indian descent living in the US. Usually her stories and novels are a...more
updated Oct 20, 2009 01:10am

Dec 15, 2008 Corey Fry rated it 3 of 5 stars

A good book that no one should take too seriously. She actually starts off a selfish, egocentric woman aghast at the quality of Indian life and grows into a spiritual investigative journalist of sorts.

I traveled to India this past year and her accounts from a western perspective are accurate. But with time, the beauty of India reveals itself to travelers and she shares this with readers.

It's a funny memoir that gives a cursory background of the spiritual-religious forces existent in modern India...more

9 likes · like · see review

Dec 07, 2010 Felix Dance rated it 3 of 5 stars

I finally gave in and bought this book in exchange for The Moonstone in Khajuraho - it's sold in big stacks everywhere in India. But the old saying that you can be so open-minded that your brain falls out certainly applies to this travel story. Former Triple J presenter Sarah MacDonald finds herself living in India while her boyfriend reports for the ABC and undergoes a spiritual journey that takes her through all of the various roads to religion from an atheist base. The book is excellently wri...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jan 02, 2013 Amit Chawla rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: trash

I read the book while holidaying in Northern NSW. The reason I read this book was because it was on the bookshelf in the holiday home we had for the week. Also because it was supposed to talk about India from a Westerners perspective.

Let me put it out there: this book is not a travelogue. It is a miserable portrayal of a difficult to understand country by a selfish Australian woman. A lot of what she passes off in the book is exaggeration. In other words, fiction. Do NOT use this book as a deci...more

3 likes · like · see review

Oct 28, 2008 Muphyn rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, travel, audiobook, religion, india, asia-pacific

I'm actually surprised I disliked this book as much as I did! I expected an hilarious account of a girl travelling to India, a place where she'd been to previously but never wanted to return to. Well, she did and she did do some travelling but it wasn't hilarious by any stretch of the imagination... She used to be a radio host in Sydney, so I figured I'd really relate to her humour but hm, there just wasn't much of that.

Since I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, what I must credit to...more

2 likes · like · see review

Nov 23, 2008 Santica rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Santica by: Kelly Cieslak

This travelogue written by an Australian woman who lived in India from 2000-2002 was a perfect read for my recent business trip to India. The author first traveled to India as a backpacker in 1988 and hated it. She returns twelve years later to live with her finance while he's working for a broadcasting company. The book mainly covers her research of India's various religions and ethnicities while living there. I don't know that the book would be that interesting for someone who hadn't been to I...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 21, 2008 René Edde rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: travelers, anyone with a fascination in India

Recommended to René by: My Hindi teacher

India with humor, the only way to take the country in stride. This book captured the heart and the essence of India and its vast array of religions and cultures, all from the outsiders perspective. I have read this book a few times and know I will read it again. But, for a bigger treat, check out the audiobook. A take on India and its many accents all with the drawl of an Australian accident. This book made me laugh so hard while driving to assignments that I nearly wet my pants.

Perfect read fo...more

6 likes · like · see review

Mar 28, 2009 Heidi rated it 4 of 5 stars

this book makes you really want to go to india and really question if you want to go to india! Her stories are amazing and make you so envious ...she got a serious inside look for sure....I want to go to India!!!!!!!

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 17, 2009 Liz rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

Sarah MacDonald, an Australian news reporter, is none too thrilled when her boyfriend Jonathan, also a reporter, is transferred to India. The author had been to India before, and hated it, but she decides that going there is better than staying at home without Jonathan. This is the story of how she adjusts to life in a country she (at first) greatly dislikes, and how gradually she comes to tolerate and even appreciate the Indian culture and people. A life-threatening bout with pneumonia awakens...more

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May 17, 2013 Anand rated it 2 of 5 stars

One of those books giving a foreigner's perspective of life in India, but disappointing in many ways. It has all the standard cliches about crowds, filth, poverty and religion over and over again. Although I must say it is very funny in places, the author largely comes off as a shallow person who is probably combining some of her own experiences with information she got from others, and maybe a little fiction thrown in as well, the crucial part about religion and spirituality is handled rather a...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Ankur Rastogi rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Holy Cow" is about an Australian woman who spends close to 2 years in India. Its about her experience, her adventure and more importantly her "spiritual" journey across the various facets of religion. It also shows her transformation from an "extreme cynic attitude" to a more "adaptable and loving attitude" towards the country.

Being an Indian, it was interesting to read the perception and subsequent impression that an outsider gets/feels when they visit India. Sometimes it was interesting, some...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Santo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: travel

It was in an old bookstore at Connaught Place, New Delhi, that I bought Sarah Macdonald’s “Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure”. Books are a bargain in India. But because Sarah’s book was not published in India, it carried a heftier price tag. Yet, I’ve heard so much good reviews about it that I just couldn’t miss buying it. But just like most of the books I bought, “Holy Cow” ended up on my shelf and was left unread for more than a year. Then, one day, while I was cleaning my shelf, I felt Shiva (on...more It was in an old bookstore at Connaught Place, New Delhi, that I bought Sarah Macdonald’s “Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure”. Books are a bargain in India. But because Sarah’s book was not published in India, it carried a heftier price tag. Yet, I’ve heard so much good reviews about it that I just couldn’t miss buying it. But just like most of the books I bought, “Holy Cow” ended up on my shelf and was left unread for more than a year. Then, one day, while I was cleaning my shelf, I felt Shiva (on the cover of the book) winking at me, asking me to give the book a reading chance.

And boy, was it worth the time! Holy Cow turned out to live up very much to its expectations (at least mine). The book chronicles of Sarah’s adventure in a land of chaos and contradiction. Set in a land so diverse in religious, cultural, and social diversity, the book tells stories of Sarah’s encounters with Hindus, Muslims, Sufis, Sikhs, Parsis, Jews and Christians. You need to understand just the premise of the book to see its potential of causing stomach cramps (because of laughter).

Sarah’s narrative is so easy to digest, inserted with honest comedy. She talked about the idiosyncrasies in life, which to most Indians, were the most basic, normal things around. She described the many stories, hypocrisies and oddities that surrounded her strive to find faith in India. In all of this, Sarah doesn’t mock the people she wrote about, but merely showed them for the readers’ own interpretation. And my interpretation was comedic, because I keep on drawing parallels with life in Indonesia.

Sarah succeeded in taking me on roller coaster trip across India. She introduced me to the Indian people and the Indian way of life. And her perspective, as a foreigner, somehow was a source of comfort for me, because I shared many of her worries and questions. Indeed, Sarah’s account gave me a new perspective different from those provided by the many Indian writers whose stories I’ve read before.

As a confused person, Sarah’s search for religious enlightenment is something of interest to me. Sarah’s journey through the Indian religious cornucopia was (undoubtedly) filled with skepticism. Yet, at the same time, she also found pockets of faith in some of the strangest places, and through some of the most unlikely characters. One of these was her encounter with a group of Israeli Jews, who made India as their new “promised land”. A place, which is not like what Moses had promised, but capable of bringing them closer to God.

Indeed, the lesson is that there is something beautiful from all the religions out there. We may choose to choose one over the other. But in the end, what works is what makes us feel the most at peace. And that could be a combination of all, or even none at all. I love Sarah’s ending of the book:

“From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life, while Islam has taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me to the power of music. Here’s to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly, and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength… And most of all, I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are million paths to the divine.”(less)

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Mar 03, 2012 Brenna rated it 2 of 5 stars

I’m a fan of travelogues, and this one seemed very promising. A decade after backpacking through India and vowing never to return because she hated it so much, Macdonald follows her journalist boyfriend to India and lives there for more than a year. Considering the author is an Aussie, I looked forward to this as an opportunity to learn more about both Indian and Australian culture through Macdonald’s observations.

This book didn’t quite live up to my expectations, though it was a witty, fun and...more I’m a fan of travelogues, and this one seemed very promising. A decade after backpacking through India and vowing never to return because she hated it so much, Macdonald follows her journalist boyfriend to India and lives there for more than a year. Considering the author is an Aussie, I looked forward to this as an opportunity to learn more about both Indian and Australian culture through Macdonald’s observations.

This book didn’t quite live up to my expectations, though it was a witty, fun and light read. Macdonald quit her job to move to India and finds herself with a surplus of free time, as her boyfriend (and later, husband, as they get married during the course of the book) is almost always away in Pakistan and Afghanistan covering stories for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Clearly Macdonald also feels purposeless without job and husband, and she becomes preoccupied with India’s own preoccupation with religion and spirituality. She goes on a spiritual quest of sorts, delving into the different religions and spending time at different ashrams, trying out meditation, yoga and even Bollywood dancing.

With her wry Australian wit, Macdonald pokes fun at the self-indulgent Westerners she sees searching for enlightenment in Eastern religions, and I think she understands the irony that she herself is one of them. I just couldn’t quite identify with her quest however – I kept waiting for her to have some kind of revelation, but her main conclusion was that all of her religious experiences were meaningful and all religions are equally valid in their ability to bring comfort and meaning to the lives of their followers.

Still, Macdonald does supply a vivid and interesting window into Indian culture, and her perspective is very honest – she portrays both the best and worst things about India. It’s dirty, overpopulated, impoverished, and yet full of sensual vibrancy – color, taste, scents. It was worth reading if only for these images – I feel like I have a much better picture of what India is like, which is the attraction of reading travelogues: the opportunity to immerse yourself in a foreign place and culture.
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Feb 20, 2012 Josie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is based on the story of an Australian radio presenter giving up her life and career in Australia to follow her boyfriend to India who is working as a journalist.

READ FOR 666 IN 2012 CHALLENGE - Apart from about 1 1/4 chapters, this book it set in India - with 1/4 of a chapter in Australia and 1 chapter in Pakistan - so I have therefore counted it as Asia > India

I FINALLY got around to reading this book after it has sat on my TBR pile for over 2 1/2 years.
I found it quite average i...more

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Feb 19, 2012 Ashu rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who can filter negativity

After reading first chapter, I realized what I am heading to, but continued to read, as a bestseller should have some salt. And, indeed it was there, just in the name of crass Ozzie sense of humor she kept on rubbing on, Indian wounds.

Though her depiction of situation of civic situations in India and obscurity of religions is very true. But, when it becomes continuous ranting and predictable, it becomes derogatory and prejudiced. When she is deriding india she gets very detailed and elaborate, b...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Jill Furedy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book wasn't what I expected: it was listed as a travelogue, but was more religious study, blurbs mentioned the humor, but while the author has a sense of humor it isn't a particularly funny book. I still found it interesting to read about her travels and her sampling of the buffet of religions in the area. A few reviews I read complained about how she's a spoiled rich white girl looking down on India...but to me, the point of it is the contrast between what she's used to in Austrailia and h...more This book wasn't what I expected: it was listed as a travelogue, but was more religious study, blurbs mentioned the humor, but while the author has a sense of humor it isn't a particularly funny book. I still found it interesting to read about her travels and her sampling of the buffet of religions in the area. A few reviews I read complained about how she's a spoiled rich white girl looking down on India...but to me, the point of it is the contrast between what she's used to in Austrailia and her new life in India. Yes, in comparison she sees India as dirty, smelly, chaotic...but I expect that would be my impression too given my suburban American background. I fully expect many Indians would be appalled by western behaviors and attitudes upon their initial exposures to it in person. If you've lived somewhere all your life, spending a year or two in a new country may get you acclimated to it but doesn't change the life you've lived up til that point. And the book is about her adventures, not to give a full history or sociological study of India: there are plenty of other books out there for those who want deeper explanations or alternate viewpoints. She still sees India as dirty and chaotic at the end but has grown more accustomed to it and also sees past the filth to the hope, the love, the kindness of many people.
I understand why various members of the religions felt unfairly represented, but I thought she explained fairly well that her encounters didn't encompass the whole of any religion. She gave us a bit of the background as it was explained to her or as she learned it,, but I thought it wa clear we were just hearing about her own experiences and not truly learning the details of each and every belief system. She did the celebrity tour of religious figures conveniently located nearby...and by celebrity, I mean both her status and knowing the right people to get her in the right places (and in better conditions) to see the spectacles, and the celebrity status of the leaders themselves who are both worshipped and made into consumer product lines. While we heard little of the locals version of events, the bits we saw of other nationalities reasons for visiting India, from the religious pilgrims to the partiers, helped fill in some of the other faces in the crowds she was constantly surrounded by.
I did find it strange that we knew more about her girlfriends in India than her husband, who was off on his own adventures covering the middle east conflicts. She mentioned occasionally the strain the separation was putting on their marriage, but didn't show much of that. I suppose that was fine since it wasn't supposed to be the story of her relationship, but it seemed a bit odd.
There were a few parts where the book dragged a little, but for the most part I found it a fascinating tour of the religions and people of India. I don't expect to go there myself, so I like to hear stories of how others see the world, especially those I can relate to in some way (so the world travellers who are used to dealing with different cultures aren't for me!) So unlike those using the book for research for a trip or to compare their own trips to hers, I was content to just hear her story.
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Oct 15, 2011 Justin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

I didn't really like this book. I was looking for a good travel book about India to accompany me on my trip to India. This book is not a great travel book. The stories were not that compelling. The writing wasn't awesome.

That said, this book was interesting and did add to my trip. The book is written by an Australian journalist who is forced into early retirement because her boyfriend moves her to India so he can take this great job. So the author is stuck in an apartment with disposable income...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

To anyone who has ever pined away to go to India but doubts they ever will... read this book! This author's writing was so vibrant, so colorful, so funny and tongue-in-cheek, that I really felt like I was there in India with her. Even better, she spent a lot of time touring various parts of the country due to the fact that she didn't really have a job during the long-term time she was there (she moved there for her husband's job), so we get to see a LOT of nooks and crannies of India that I didn...more

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May 03, 2011 Daniel Roy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, travel

I loved this book once I finished it; however, the cover, title and back cover are misleading.

I expected a humorous romp through India, but this book really explores serious themes and real-life situations, albeit with humor. I wanted a light-hearted introduction to India as I was headed there - what I got instead was a hard look at some of the good and not-so-good about India.

I found the beginning of the book hard to take, bordering on xenophobic; the tone changes as the author begins to "under...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Yosha S rated it 3 of 5 stars

Finally a post after a very long time. My marriage kept me occupied, and hence the delay in writing about my new book. While I was on my honeymoon to Kerala, I saw this lady in a cafe reading a book "Holy Cow!".. What struck me was the cover of the book. It had the Hindu God Shiva on the cover, and the title too was definitely intriguing. Once back from Kerala, on my visit to the Book store, I saw this book, and I picked it up.

Holy Cow! by Sarah MacDonald is all about an Indian adventure. I like...more

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Nov 21, 2009 Cliff rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This is a travel book about India. Any intending reader should treat the following, from page one of the book, as fair warning of the author's aptitude for her task:

For my twenty-first birthday my parents gave me a plane ticket and a blessing to leave home and Australia for a year. ... My trip through Europe, Egypt and Turkey is a bit of a blur and recollections of the two-month tour of India on the way home are vague.

Eleven years later the writer returns to India to accompany her partner, who h...more

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Aug 08, 2009 Lori rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: probably-won-t-bother-to-finish, non-fiction, travel-the-world

I enjoy books exploring the different cultures and customs of the world. I enjoy a well-written memoir exploring those discoveries, but I finally put this one aside about 3/4 of the way through it. I tried, I truly tried to finish it, but with so many wonderful books out there waiting to be read, I couldn't justify spending another minute listening to this poor, lost woman attempt to "find herself" or the meaning of life that she was so desperately seeking.

I had read reviews mentioning that ther...more

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Mar 25, 2013 William Hamman rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

I quite enjoyed this book!

I wasn't sure I was going to at first, because in the beginning, the narrator (Sarah) is pretty unlikable. She's shrill and strident, and seems to be carrying a double-helping of the usual Western disdain for non-Western countries. She goes on and on about the smell, the raw sewage, the trash, and you think "Oh great, I'm not sure I'm in the mood for another 150 pages of snotty Western cultural supremacy."

But since she has nothing much to do in India, she starts (for la...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Matthew rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a quirky travel journal that wove in and out of the crazy land of India. I entered with some pretty high expectations, and the book didn't disappoint. I even left with a few new takes on India and the varied subjects of Macdonald's book that I hadn't considered before.

Macdonald's skillful writing is littered with satirical and sarcastic quirks, which may offend some with a lighter skin. However, I found the book to be fairly honest and without too much prejudice. There is a definite lov...more

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“The cycle of violence needs extreme love to break it.” — 9 people liked it

“... I like your Jesus ... there's no doubt he was a great sadhu, most likely trained in India, but you know, he was wrong about God. God is not a judgemental giant sitting up in heaven, it's a force within us all - we are light bulbs in the electrical system of the universe.” — 3 people liked it

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Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure

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