These suggestions are by no means an exhaustive list of the books available. A number of the titles listed are unavailable in North America, Europe or Australia, all however are easily found in India and Nepal’s many excellent bookshops.

Travelogues
Alexander Frater - Chasing the Monsoon
William Dalrymple - City of Djinns
William Dalrymple – Age of Kali
Geoffrey Moorhouse Calcutta - A City Revealed
Jonah Blank – Arrow of the B lue-skinned God
VS Naipaul - India - A Wounded Civilisation and A Million Mutinies Now
Stephen Alter – Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage up the Ganges River to the Source of Hindu Culture
James Cameron - An Indian Summer
Mark Tully - No Full Stops In India
John Keay - Into India

History
Romila Thapar - Pelican History of India
Patrick French – Liberty or Death
Christopher Hibbert - The Great Mutiny - India 1857
Tariq Ali - The Nehrus & the Gandhis
Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre - Freedom at Midnight
Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda – A Traveler’s History of India
India: Rough Guide Chronicles (an excellent pocket-sized reference)
Richard Hall - Empires of the Monsoon: A History of the Indian Ocean and its Conquerors
John Keay – India: A History
Peter Hopkirk - The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Asia
John Keay – The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of how India was Mapped and Everest was Named

Holy Books and Epics
Upanishads
Bhagavad Gita
Ramayana
Mahabarata

Religion
Hinduism by KM Sen
A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology &Religion
Heinrich Zimmer – Philosophies of India
Kim Knott - Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction
Gavin Flood: An Introduction to Hinduism
Mel Thompson - Teach Yourself Eastern Philosophy
Karen Armstrong – Buddha
Damien Keown – Buddhism
Sue Hamilton – Indian Philosophy

Fiction - Colonial Literature
Rudyard Kipling - Kim
Rudyard Kipling - Plain Tales from the Hills
EM Forster - A Passage to India

Fiction - post-colonial
Vikram Seth- A Suitable Boy
Shauna Singh Baldwin - What the Body Remembers
Chitra Divakaruni – The Mistress of Spices
Arundhati Roy – God of Small Things
David Davidar – The House of Blue Mangoes