A lot of people love travelling. Typically, people travel for three reasons: to see new places, to experience new cultures, and to get away from their daily routine. There is a fourth kind of traveller, who is not talked about much -- the one who travels to eat animals and birds they’ve never eaten before, to drink brews and beers they’ve never drunk before, and then, to tell the rest of the world where and how to go about eating and drinking life forms they’ve never consumed before. As professional travel writer, Zac O’ Yeah belongs to the fourth category, but his latest book also offers much more than traveller’s tales – it is a hilarious take on the evolving food cultures and literature and travel in India, and is brilliant in the way interweaves books and writers with hotels and bondas.

Zac O’ Yeah’s ‘Digesting India: A Travel Writer’s Sun-continental Adventures with the Tummy (A Memoir a la Carte)’ comes in the wake of several works of non-fiction and fiction, including the famous Hari Majestic trilogy that the Swedish-Indian writer is most known for in India.

In this episode, we chat with Zac about his impressions, experiences and discoveries on his literary-culinary romp through the sub-continent.

(00:00) Introduction

(06:19) Travel writing 

(14:40) Bengaluru bookstores

(18:31) Love-hate relationship with bondas

(24:39) Experience in Bundi 

(27:53) The room in Rohet Garh 

(32:15) Encounter with RK Narayan

(36:20) Kongunadu cuisine

(41:57) Street food in Delhi

(44:40) Best places for beer in India