Prana Soup: an Indian odyssey - Paperback

by Margaret C. Halliday (Author)

Prana Soup describes Margaret Halliday's three trips to India in candid, sometimes hilarious, detail. She embarks alone on her first trip at the age of fifty, undeterred by multiple sclerosis and osteoarthritis. She fell in love with the country and returned for two six-month trips, keeping a diary of her travels. These diaries have now evolved into Prana Soup. On her first two visits she travels from the Himalaya to the southernmost tip, meeting a fascinating mix of people and having memorable adventures. Her quest plunges her into a veritable 'life force' soup of tasty delights and enticing encounters. She escapes a rail riot, receives a tempting marriage proposal, has a close encounter with a python, is pulled up a hillside after an arduous trek in Sikkim, resides with royalty in Udaipur, has a strange liaison in Goa, is blessed by an elephant, travels to the biggest ship breaking yard in the world, does a Brahma Kumaris meditation course on the top of Mount Abu and stays in Auroville, the 'City of Dawn', to mention a few. She keeps encountering folk who are on a spiritual quest and realises that she too is a seeker. Her third trip focuses more on seeking rather than simply travelling. She traverses the second highest road in the world to Ladakh, 'Little Tibet', does a Buddhist retreat near Dharamsala, a month long yoga course in Rishikesh, stays at the headquarters of the Hare Krishna movement and undergoes ayurvedic treatment for arthritis in Mumbai where she also attends meetings with the 'divine banker', Ramesh Balsekar. In the book's epilogue she describes her future travels and spiritual experiences, explaining how they have enriched her life and enabled her to live with the pain of MS and osteoarthritis, hopefully inspiring others to live life to the full.

Author Biography

Margaret Halliday was born in England in 1949. She moved to Edinburgh, married, raised two children and qualified as a science teacher. After her marriage broke up in 1986 she went to lecture at Marmara University in Istanbul, undeterred by the onset of multiple sclerosis. Later she taught EFL in Budapest and Damascus, exploring their environs widely in her holidays. She travelled alone, aged fifty, to India, fell in love with the country and returned for two more six-month trips. She kept diaries throughout and these evolved into 'Prana Soup - an Indian Odyssey', published 2013. After her Indian adventures she became a 'WWOOFer' (a worldwide worker on organic farms) in New Zealand and later Scotland. She is now settled in Edinburgh, virtually travelling through her writing, although she still goes on the occasional trip. She published a second book, Good Vibrations, about her experience of single motherhood in the sixties (2015) and has written a third about her time as a WWOOFer, WWOOFing North and South, published 2016.