Bill Aitken (writer)

William McKay Aitken is a British-born Indian travel writer and mountain lover from Scotland. He is the author of a number of books about India, its mountains, rivers and its steam trains.

Life and career
Born in Tullibody in Clackmannanshire, Scotland in 1934, Aitken attended Handsworth Grammar School in Birmingham, and completed his M.A in comparative religion at the University of Leeds. In 1959, he hitchhiked overland to India and taught for a year at Hindi HighSchool in Calcutta. From 1960 to 1972, he lived in Himalayan ashrams at Kausani and Mirtola. In 1972, he became a naturalized Indian citizen. With their Guru's blessings he joined Prithwi Bir Kaur, the dowager Maharani of the erstwhile Sikh Princely state of Jind as companion. Based in Delhi and Mussoorie, Aitken travelled widely in India, covering the religious landscape in a dozen travel books. Bill Aitken's writings are characterized by a free-wheeling description of his travels, interspersed with intimate details of the land and its people, and their religious beliefs. He has been President of the Friends of the National Rail Museum in New Delhi and hon. Librarian of the Himalayan Club.

Since the 1970s, he has lived in the hill station of Mussoorie in the Lower Western Himalaya. The surrounding region, especially the Garhwal Hills, has provided much of the material for his writings. With the passing of Prithwi Bir Kaur in 2010, he was appointed a trustee of the Maharani Prithwi Jind Memorial Trust till 2014.

Works

 * Seven Sacred Rivers, 1992 (Penguin Books India), ISBN 0-14-015473-6
 * Divining the Deccan - A Motorbike to the Heart of India, (Oxford, 1999), ISBN 0-19-564-7114
 * Footloose in the Himalaya, (Delhi, Permanent Black, 2003), ISBN 81-7824-052-1
 * The Nanda Devi Affair, 1994 (Penguin Books India), ISBN 0-14-024045-4
 * Touching Upon the Himalaya: Excursions and Enquiries, 2004 (Indus Books, New Delhi, 2004), ISBN 81-7387-169-8
 * Exploring Indian Railways, (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1994), ISBN 0-19-563109-9
 * Branch Line to Eternity, 2001 (Penguin Books India), ISBN 0-14-100537-8
 * Sri Sathya Sai Baba - A Life,2004 (Viking/Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd.), ISBN 0-670-05807-6
 * Literary Trails (1996), HarperCollins (ISBN 81-7223-240-3)
 * Riding the Ranges - Travels on my Motorcycle (1997), Penguin Books India, (ISBN 0-14-026804-9)
 * Mountain Delight, English Book Depot, Dehradun, (1994) (ISBN 81-85567-16-6)
 * Tavels By a Lesser Line, HarperCollins, (1993) (ISBN 81-7223-086-9)
 * Zanskar, 1999, Rupa Classic India, (ISBN 81-7167-199-3)
 * 1000 Himalayan Quiz, 1995, Rupa (ISBN 81-7167-290-6)