Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic books and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
Just passed through Siem Reap International Airport in Cambodia today and spotted my new book Sacred Skin in the airport bookshop, displayed prominently next to Birds of South East Asia and Ferns of the Tropics…hm, topical. Spent a week on assignment in Siem Reap before returning to a flooded Bangkok. Sacred Skin is the first [...]
Tom Vater’s first novel, ‘The Devil’s Road To Kathmandu’, was published in Hong Kong with Dragon’s Mouth Press, an imprint of Orchid Press, in 2006.
Peter Myers - Lifestyle + Travel
Three friends, two cities, one bus and a seemingly endless supply of narcotics: a typical GAP year? Maybe not. It’s 1976, and the lads’ road to [...]
Tom Vater’s first novel, ‘The Devil’s Road To Kathmandu’, was published in Hong Kong with Dragon’s Mouth Press, an imprint of Orchid Press in 2006.
Don Messerschmidt - The Nepali Times
Follow the drugs, the money, the past. An old hippie returns to Kathmandu after 25 years.
The Devil’s Road by Tom Vater is a great read. It’s [...]
When Dan, Tim and Fred, three naive hippies, set off from London to Kathmandu with few funds and a dodgy bus, a drug deal in Pakistan seems like the most common sense way to make the journey pay. But the mountains of the Hindu Kush, a mysterious Frenchman, a set of Iranian Siamese Twins cum nightclub singers, [...]
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Vater’s observations on the human condition, as he experiences it firsthand along the less tourist-beaten paths of South and Southeast Asia, result in a no-holds-barred account of life in the region, distinctly as not described in the glossy brochures. Figuratively and at times literally far removed from the glittering urban centers and pampering resorts - [...]