Author and digital strategist Polly McGee will take a tour group to India, exploring the destinations depicted in her lauded novel Dogs of India.
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McGee, who splits her time between Launceston and Hobart, feels a strong affinity with the subcontinent, and published the 2015 novel after a life-changing trip in 2011.
She will join forces with World Expeditions to take a small group on a novel trip.
McGee said the adventure will geographically correlate “incredibly directly” with the novel’s protagonist’s journey.
The itinerary will include learning traditional Indian recipes, the Jaipur Literature Festival, visiting the Taj Mahal and feeding puppies.
"It's not a budget backpacking tour, it's a tour where people will get to have an in-depth experience," McGee said.
"We thought it was a really innovative idea in terms of lifting a narrative off the page and making it a lived experience.
"The minute you hand that character over to a reader, you've given them a shell and then they fill it in with all their sensory experiences.”
McGee hasn’t returned to India since the novel’s publication, and is eager to reconnect with the country and her friends there.
McGee is completing the manuscript of a non-fiction book, exploring how to establish a balanced business combining “the ancient principles of yoga” and entrepreneurial zeal.
The book is particularly concerned with encouraging women to pursue their business dreams.
"I'm a classic living example of someone who's wandered around their whole lives trying to find what it is they want to … and because I didn't know what it was, I [felt I] was somehow at fault,” McGee said.
“It's just such a beautiful thing to watch someone else come into that awareness of their own happiness."
Another novel, set in India and Nepal, is also in the works.
McGee said it would stray slightly from the issues she usually explored through her writing.
"I tend to write around similar themes of renunciation and self-exploration… [but] this book will be quite different,” McGee said.
“It's really looking at how we imprison ourselves in materiality."
Information about Polly McGee’s ‘My India’ tour, from January 13 until January 24, is available at www.worldexpeditions.com.au