2 days to go before my second book, Rootless and Restless, is officially released 🥹 A behind-the-scenes look at how I ended up writing this book 👆🏽
Get your copy now on Amazon / Flipkart (link also in my bio) ✍🏽
Excited to see you at my book launch in your city:
📍 2nd May: Deer Park, Bir, Himachal
📍 5th May: Greenr Cafe, GK 1, Delhi
📍 7th May: The Royal Opera House, Mumbai
📍 16th May: Champaca Bookstore, Indiranagar, Bangalore
Register at the link in my bio (and if your city isn’t included in this leg of the book tour, vote for it in the next leg!). See you soon 💚
After walking just a brief stretch of the Camino de Santiago (Camino Francés) in Castilla y León in northern Spain, my feet were tired, my journal overflowing and my heart full 💚
Can’t wait to go back one day to walk a longer stretch of the trail.
All my gratitude for the opportunity @spain@castillayleontourism 🌸
I’m still pinching myself that my second book - Rootless and Restless - is now out in the world 😮
I spent 3 years working on it (writing, editing, publishing) + 5 years living the stories in the book (from Iran to Japan to Cuba). But to be honest, the last 3 weeks have been the most nerve-wracking.
Will anyone pre-order? Will anyone show up for my book launch? Will anyone go to their fav bookstore to ask for a copy? Will anyone write a review?
Today, I just want to take a moment to say how grateful I am to each one of you – for believing in my work and pre-ordering your copy, coming to my book launch events in Bir, Delhi and Mumbai with so much warmth and curiosity, buying the book at your local bookstore, gifting the book to your loved ones, and even telling me how you’re feeling as you’ve started reading it 🥹
Writing a book is not easy, perhaps even harder a second time. But today my heart is so full of gratitude for embarking on this journey again 💚
PS: If you don’t have your copy yet, get it at your nearest bookstore, or on Amazon / Flipkart. Link is also in my bio!
PPS: The last leg of my book tour will be in Bangalore on the coming Saturday, 16th May - 7 pm at Champaca, Indiranagar. RSVP at the link in my profile 👋🏽
Have you started reading Rootless and Restless yet?
Rootless and Restless by @shivya turns the lens on travel, asking whom it truly serves, what it costs in carbon, and whether it is possible to move through the world in a way that gives back more than it takes.
Tomorrow, join us for the Mumbai launch of Rootless and Restless at @mumbaiopera for an evening where Shivya’s literary journey meets a larger conversation about tourism, ecology, and our collective responsibility to the places and people that receive us.
Featuring a keynote address by @diamirzaofficial
🔗Register via link in bio
Beyond the popular cities and coast of @spain , these villages and valleys in the Spanish Pyrenees are waiting to welcome conscious travellers who want to slow down, connect with locals, learn about forgotten legends, participate in living traditions, immerse in wild nature and perhaps also reconnect with themselves 💚👆🏽
Thanks @catalunyaexperience@visitpirineus@aralleida for a glimpse of Spain far beyond the beaten path!
Spending time in the Spanish Pyrenees, I realized that they are not just a travel destination. They are living landscapes and legends. They are centuries of culture and tradition, still preserved. They are isolated valleys and forgotten villages. They are custodians of a rich, tumultuous history. They are generations of farmers and shepherds who found warmth in cold, harsh circumstances.
If you ever find yourself there, take the time to connect with their stories. And perhaps through them, you might find a new perspective to view the world today 💚
@spain@catalunyaexperience@visitpirineus@aralleida
I can hardly believe that MY SECOND BOOK - Rootless and Restless - releases this month 🥹 Limited copies are available for pre-order on Amazon now (link also in my bio)!
About the book:
“What happens when you leave behind the familiar and follow your curiosity to far corners of the world?
In Rootless and Restless, Shivya Nath trades comfort for adventure and sets off on a deeply personal journey to some of our planet’s most remote places. From a tiny island deep in the Arctic to off-grid Indigenous communities in Myanmar and the stark mountain deserts of Uzbekistan, she travels in search of stories, traditions and ways of life that are rarely written about.
Along the way, Shivya finds herself tangled in a morality police raid in Iran, discovering centuries-old traditions in Japan, and coming face-to-face with the last living member of an entire species in the Pacific Ocean.
In a world shaped by social media, cultural divides and climate change, Rootless and Restless is a reminder that travel can be more than ticking destinations off a list. It can open doors to remarkable people, unexpected lessons and perhaps even transform the traveller herself.”
Excited (and nervous!) to share these adventures with you 🌸
Get your copy, and share this with your fav people so Rootless and Restless can find the right readers 💚🙏
So grateful to the many, many people who made this book possible, especially:
👉🏼 My literary agent @kanishka.gupta.754
👉🏼 My commissioning editors @nathan_archana@manasisubramaniam at @penguinindia
👉🏼 My brilliant editor @shubhodeep_pal
👉🏼 My publicists @nainatripathi@theliteratureamour
Have you ever dreamt of writing a book? What would you like to hear about my journey as an author?
Hola from Catalunya, Spain 👋🏽
It took me several stunning train journeys from Berlin - via Frankfurt, Lyon and Barcelona - to arrive in the Spanish Pyrenees (you saw glimpses on my stories) 😍
I’m here on a travel storytelling assignment for @spain (Spain Tourism), and over two weeks, will be travelling to parts of Catalunya and Castilla y Leon that genuinely need tourism - the slow, conscious kind.
I’ll be e-biking through remote Pyrenean valleys, hiking a short stretch of the Camino de Santiago, rafting down the icy Noguera river (once known for water trade), and learning about forgotten legends and ancient traditions in these faraway villages in the heart of the Pyrenees.
Excited to experience a whole other side of the country with @catalunyaexperience@aralleida@visitpirineus and @castillayleontourism 💚
Curious, have you visited the Spanish Pyrenees or Castilla y Leon? Share your recommendations 👇🏼
What are you most curious to hear about from my experiences here?
How can we share the happiness we feel while travelling, with the people who live in the places we visit?
👉🏼 Expand our definition of travel. Think beyond sightseeing, and think in terms of art, music, food, history, dance, architecture, environment or whatever else truly holds meaning for us.
👉🏼 Stay at eco-friendly, local-run accommodations that can enable genuine socio-cultural exchanges beyond the tourist track.
👉🏼 Respect the local culture. It’s high time we drop our “demanding” mentality. Just because we’ve paid for a holiday doesn’t mean we can make unfair demands, disrespect local traditions or behave obnoxiously.
👉🏼 Walk, cycle or take public transport, like the locals. The quickest way to get familiar with a new place is to figure out its public transport.
👉🏼 Slow down and spend more time in one place. Rather than skimming the surface of a hundred places for some Instagram-worthy photos, get to know one place and its people deeper.
👉🏼 Carry our own water bottle and say no to other single-use plastic.
👉🏼 Look for zero-waste stores, local markets and small-scale entrepreneurs, who care about fair wages and have a considerably lower environmental footprint.
👉🏼 Travel with responsible travel companies or social enterprises that support the community, to deepen our understanding of the world and make real human connections.
👉🏼 Be mindful of what we post on social media, and how we portray locals.
How do you ensure that your travels bring happiness to the world too?
Over the past few months of living in Berlin, I’ve come to feel a deep appreciation for its interest-based communities. One of them is a Silent Reading Club!
👉🏼 We meet once a week at the gorgeous @bode.museum , built in the Baroque architectural style in the early 1900s. Under the high domed ceilings, in the regal atmosphere of the museum, each of us read the book we’ve brought along for a silent hour.
👉🏼 This is followed by a social hour, during which we discuss the books we’ve been reading and the themes that’ve intrigued us. These conversations have introduced me to people from all walks of life – teachers, writers, policymakers and others from across Germany and the world.
👉🏼 In a world of constant distraction, that weekly hour of silent reading, surrounded by fellow readers, has reminded me of the joy of reading everyday. I share my recommendations once a month in my newsletter (theshootingstar.substack.com).
👉🏼 More than that, the after-reading conversations have introduced me to books about Germany, spirituality, environmentalism and beyond, that I might never have known otherwise!
👉🏼 I wish communities like these sprout everywhere, so we can get our faces out of our devices (atleast for an hour or so) and get them into books 📚
Do you spend time reading these days? How do you make sure you get distraction-free time to read?
