The Green Unknown: Travels in the Khasi Hills

For the armchair travelers who particularly enjoy reading travelogues about exotic, out-of-the-way travel adventures, Patrick Rogers’ The Green Unknown is a nice choice. This is an extensive, very detailed eBook in ten chapters, covering virtually every aspect of the Kashi people in the Kashi Hills, located in a little corner of the northeast Indian state of Meghalaya. Rogers’ recent trip he describes in this book is not his first – he’s visited the region several times before. This is a very thorough description of the history of the regions and other aspects of the Kashi Hills. But his main focus remains on the people. Rogers traveled by foot and without plans, wandering from village to village and admiring the stunning natural beauty of this extremely rugged region. He characterizes the book “as being about heartbreaking beauty arrived at unexpectedly through weird tangents.” Rogers’ writing is good though so detailed it may not be a page-turner to every reader. He illustrates the book with scattered photos but not enough for a travelogue. The description of living root bridges is fascinating. More location maps would be helpful. The formatting, annoyingly, is not consistent throughout. Interesting dialogues interrupt his descriptive text.