The timeline is 1909. Shankar is a simple yet charismatic young boy from the villages of West Bengal, India. He has always been a good student in schoThe timeline is 1909. Shankar is a simple yet charismatic young boy from the villages of West Bengal, India. He has always been a good student in school, who loved to read about astronomy, geography and had an innate calling for the unknown and adventure. He always wanted to explore the wild plains and jungles of Africa and didn't want to stay cooped up in his small village and live a mundane life. With some help from a neighbor who was settled and working in Africa, he goes there and gets himself a job and from there starts his adventures.
At first, he gets awestruck by the vastness of the dark continent. The flora and fauna that he has only read through books, stand in front of him in their grand beauty. He faces man-eating lions, poisonous snakes, and whatnot. He starts his career there as the official storekeeper and a clerk in a railway construction gig. This line was a part of the Mombasa to Kisumu section. There he fights nature and lives in a tent along with other workers and fights to survive as a pack of man-eating lions made their work difficult by killing off the workers one by one. Then Shankar takes charge of a small station along that line as a Station Master and lives a quiet and simple life, albeit dangerous as well. There he meets Diego Alvarez, a Portuguese explorer on the verge of his death due to exhaustion, exposure, and fatigue. He nurses Alvarez back to his health, and Alvarez tells him the story of a huge and unexplored diamond mine in the Richersveldt Mountain range. Also, the story of the mythical creature/monster Bunyip that guards the mine deep within a mountain cave. How his partner was killed by that monster and how he barely survived with his life. All these stories make Shankar leave his job as a Station Master and go on a quest of adventure into the unknowns of the wilderness.
Do they survive the ordeal of marching through dense jungles that don't even allow sunlight to breach the canopy, Do they find the diamond mine, do they stay safe from the mythical monster, do they come back safely back to civilization....?
I loved reading the book and once again I was transported back to my childhood days and to the rugged veldts of Africa and the unforgiving Kalahari Desert.
The language of the book, the way it is written, is very easy to understand and keeps you engrossed from the start till the end....more