DAVID COOPER/TORONTO STAR Benjamin Walsh, 31, of Toronto has established a particularly adventurous book club, "Reading India." He got the idea while reading a novel on a train from Mumbai.

For an overnight train journey through India, Benjamin Walsh packed a fresh new novel.

Pulling south out of Mumbai two years ago, he cracked open David Davidar's The Solitude of Emperors and realized as the sun rose the next morning he was riding the same train as the book's protagonist.

"The windows and doors were all open, I was watching all this incredible landscape go by and I was reading about a young journalist who travels from Bombay (Mumbai) to cover communal violence in southern India," Walsh recalls.

"It was very likely the same train, even the same train number," he says. "All of a sudden this idea popped into my mind – could I convince 10 or 12 customers to do this sort of thing with me?"

Walsh had just started working at Nicholas Hoare book store on Front St. E. and last fall – after intensive research – launched a particularly adventurous book club, "Reading India."

Members gathered at the store to discuss six books in six months, then travelled to the literary settings. The trip included 12 readers, ran three weeks and cost $7,850, including flights, meals and accommodation.

This fall a repeat offering quickly sold out, making two India groups a possibility. Encouraged by the success, Walsh is also running two Havana book/travel clubs this winter and is to announce a Russian Trans-Siberian Railway club later this year.

"Sometimes a place doesn't match what you imagine," says Charlotte Sam, an inaugural member and director of St. Stephen's Waterfront Child Care Centre.

A tumble-down building called History House in Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things stood resplendent in real life as a colonial-era hotel.

"When we saw it, it looked just wonderful," Sam says. "We ate lunch there, then boarded a boat for the backwaters of Kerala."

Meeting for discussions once a month, and taking a meal together in Little India on Gerrard St. E., meant the group bonded before departure, Sam says. "It was like travelling with your school mates."

But the group suffered one major disruption.

Last fall, while everyone was reading Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, Islamist terrorists attacked several targets in Mumbai, the book's setting, leaving more than 170 people dead, including two Canadians.

"Half the group withdrew," Walsh says. "The other half continued to read the book and we were able to pick up the extra people to make 12."

Walsh continues to regard Mumbai with particular affection. Now 31, he made his first solo trip there at 16 and has returned again and again.

"People imagine Bombay to be not the real India, but both through fiction and non-fiction you find a city rich and diverse and lush and exciting," he says. "Fiction becomes a great guide when you're travelling."

The group convenes Oct. 13 to discuss The House of Blue Mangoes, the latest work by David Davidar, an Indian author now residing in Toronto as publisher at Penguin Canada.

Last year he appeared as the club's guest.

DAVID COOPER/TORONTO STAR Benjamin Walsh, 31, of Toronto has established a particularly adventurous book club, "Reading India." He got the idea while reading a novel on a train from Mumbai.

For an overnight train journey through India, Benjamin Walsh packed a fresh new novel.

Pulling south out of Mumbai two years ago, he cracked open David Davidar's The Solitude of Emperors and realized as the sun rose the next morning he was riding the same train as the book's protagonist.

"The windows and doors were all open, I was watching all this incredible landscape go by and I was reading about a young journalist who travels from Bombay (Mumbai) to cover communal violence in southern India," Walsh recalls.

"It was very likely the same train, even the same train number," he says. "All of a sudden this idea popped into my mind – could I convince 10 or 12 customers to do this sort of thing with me?"

Walsh had just started working at Nicholas Hoare book store on Front St. E. and last fall – after intensive research – launched a particularly adventurous book club, "Reading India."

Members gathered at the store to discuss six books in six months, then travelled to the literary settings. The trip included 12 readers, ran three weeks and cost $7,850, including flights, meals and accommodation.

This fall a repeat offering quickly sold out, making two India groups a possibility. Encouraged by the success, Walsh is also running two Havana book/travel clubs this winter and is to announce a Russian Trans-Siberian Railway club later this year.

"Sometimes a place doesn't match what you imagine," says Charlotte Sam, an inaugural member and director of St. Stephen's Waterfront Child Care Centre.

A tumble-down building called History House in Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things stood resplendent in real life as a colonial-era hotel.

"When we saw it, it looked just wonderful," Sam says. "We ate lunch there, then boarded a boat for the backwaters of Kerala."

Meeting for discussions once a month, and taking a meal together in Little India on Gerrard St. E., meant the group bonded before departure, Sam says. "It was like travelling with your school mates."

But the group suffered one major disruption.

Last fall, while everyone was reading Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, Islamist terrorists attacked several targets in Mumbai, the book's setting, leaving more than 170 people dead, including two Canadians.

"Half the group withdrew," Walsh says. "The other half continued to read the book and we were able to pick up the extra people to make 12."

Walsh continues to regard Mumbai with particular affection. Now 31, he made his first solo trip there at 16 and has returned again and again.

"People imagine Bombay to be not the real India, but both through fiction and non-fiction you find a city rich and diverse and lush and exciting," he says. "Fiction becomes a great guide when you're travelling."

The group convenes Oct. 13 to discuss The House of Blue Mangoes, the latest work by David Davidar, an Indian author now residing in Toronto as publisher at Penguin Canada.

Last year he appeared as the club's guest.