Indian Summers: Mumbai and Beyond
‘The style is observational and anecdotal, his vignettes illuminated by the assorted zany characters he meets. Anyone who has ventured alone around India, with an open mind and a sense of humour, will find resonance in Cochrane’s adventures.’
– Susan Kurosawa, travel editor, The Australian newspaper
‘Ian Cochrane took me on an evocative journey as rewarding as the real thing – more so, since no tourist in India could gain the kind of personal insight intimately portrayed within these covers.’
– Robert Hollingworth, author, Smythe’s Theory of Everything and They Called Me the Wildman
Indian Summers is about being there, in this land of two million gods; commingled with Cochrane’s nostalgic memories of 1967’s Summer of Love – gurus, tie-dye and cheesecloth-clad women with flowers in their hair; youthful bearded men in patched jeans and psychedelic headbands.
Touching down in the mixed-up metropolis of Mumbai, with its 20 million souls, the most horrendous traffic in the world and the largest slums in Asia, he discovers the gods of cricket, Bollywood and billionaires. In 13 stories, two maps and 100 photographs, you’ll untangle glimpses of India in all its idiosyncrasy, viewed through the kaleidoscope of past and present and told by an accomplished teller of tales.
Words & photographs by Ian Cochrane
Publishing & editing by Wordy-Gurdy Press
Design & prepress by FLUX Design Studio
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Everything Under the Sun : Australian short stories of light and shade from A to Z
Telling tales from a sunburned country, an Antipodean oddity both urban and Outback; the journey often nostalgic, reflective, happy or sad – sometimes all of the above. The stories are an eclectic, compilation of assorted bibelots, loaded with lyrical imagery. And while there is lots of `travel’ in this wandering, walkabout of a book, the stories are really more about people, places and the human condition. Most have been previously published here and there, in some form at least, scattered across various blogs, the occasional newspaper and/or offered up in a literary competition. They vary in length – a menagerie of the tall and the true – heartfelt vignettes suitably laced with longing and wanderlust; all intended to lead the reader to who knows where.
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A World Away : global short stories of light and shade from A to Z
Telling tales from a small world; the journey often nostalgic, reflective, happy or sad – sometimes all of the above. The stories are an eclectic, compilation of assorted bibelots, loaded with lyrical imagery. And while there is lots of `travel’ in this wandering, world-wide walkabout of a book, the stories are really more about people, places and the human condition. Most have been previously published here and there, in some form at least, scattered across various blogs, the occasional newspaper and/or offered up in a literary competition. They vary in length – a menagerie of the tall and the true – heartfelt vignettes suitably laced with longing and wanderlust; all intended to lead the reader to who knows where.
BUY E-BOOK HERE BUY P-BOOK HERE
Published Features
Weekend Australian Travel & Indulgence April 2010
Ghosts in the Murk and Mist
JOURNEYS – THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY
BROKEN walls topple, taking their last defenders with them. Canal bridges, city gates and the cathedral burn. Steel clashes with steel, horses’ hoofs pound stone roads and women drag screaming children, the old and infirm towards the hills and mountains. Columns groan and collapse in an apocalypse of billowing dust and smoke.
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Weekend Australian Travel & Indulgence October 2010
Up a Magic Mountain
DESTINATION AUSTRALIA
UNDER a canopy of mountain palms, primeval smells of black mud and musty rainforest drench the air. Sphagnum moss smothers stunted trunks with bright green velvet, while moorei orchids cling to rotting stumps in an understorey of lichens, staghorns and more than 30 species of fern.
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Weekend Australian Travel & Indulgence September 2011
Fleur’s Patch of Paradise
THE HUNGRY TOURIST
AFTER a month tramping the wilds of New Zealand’s southwest, surviving on packets of dried hiking food, we sit at a stripped-back table at Fleurs Place in Moeraki on the Otago coast.
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Literary Competitions
Ian’s Australian Outback short story `A Splendid Memory’ is included among the non-fiction 2013 Cowley Literary Award finalists.