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Bill Aitken (writer)

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Bill Aitken
Bill Aitken at his Mussoorie home, 2012Bill Aitken at his Mussoorie home, 2012
Born1934
Tullibody, Scotland
OccupationTraveller, writer
Nationality
  • British (1934–1972)
  • Indian (1972–present)
Period1975–present

William McKay Aitken is a British-born Indian travel writer and mountain lover from Scotland. He is the author of a number of books about India, its mountains, rivers and its steam trains.

Life and career

Born in Tullibody in Clackmannanshire, Scotland in 1934, Aitken attended Handsworth Grammar School in Birmingham, and completed his M.A in comparative religion at the University of Leeds. In 1959, he hitchhiked overland to India and taught for a year at Hindi HighSchool in Calcutta. From 1960 to 1972, he lived in Himalayan ashrams at Kausani and Mirtola. In 1972, he became a naturalized Indian citizen. With their Guru's blessings he joined Prithwi Bir Kaur, the dowager Maharani of the erstwhile Sikh Princely state of Jind as companion. Based in Delhi and Mussoorie, Aitken travelled widely in India, covering the religious landscape in a dozen travel books. Bill Aitken's writings are characterized by a free-wheeling description of his travels, interspersed with intimate details of the land and its people, and their religious beliefs. He has been President of the Friends of the National Rail Museum in New Delhi and hon. Librarian of the Himalayan Club.

Since the 1970s, he has lived in the hill station of Mussoorie in the Lower Western Himalaya. The surrounding region, especially the Garhwal Hills, has provided much of the material for his writings. With the passing of Prithwi Bir Kaur in 2010, he was appointed a trustee of the Maharani Prithwi Jind Memorial Trust till 2014.

Works

References

  1. "Bill Aitken". Mussoorie Writers. 16 April 2015. Archived from the original on 16 April 2015.
  2. Pandey, Maneesh (28 July 2001). "Rail tourism needs to be put on track". The Times of India. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
  3. "The Accidental Expatriate".
  4. Written Forever: The Best of Civil Lines. Hachette India. 2014. ISBN 978-93-5009-783-0. Retrieved 16 March 2024. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)

Further reading

External links

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