Bill Aitken

Bill Aitken is Scottish by birth, a naturalized Indian by choice. He studied comparative religion at Leeds University and then hitch-hiked to India in 1959. He has lived in Himalayan ashrams, worked as secretary to a maharani, freelanced under his middle name (Liam McKay) and undertaken miscellaneous excursions—from Nanda Devi to Sabarimala—on an old motorbike and by steam railway. Aitken has written on travel and tourism for newspapers and magazines in India for several years and is the author of The Nanda Devi Affair, Footloose in the Himalaya, Riding the Ranges and Branch Line to Eternity among other books.