The book John Muir Trail India, authored by me and recently published by Penguin, deeply explores the idea of sense of place through the relatively little-known journey of John Muir across India in 1903.
Here, sense of place is more than geographical location; it is the relationship between people and places shaped by feelings, memories, stories, identity, culture, history and ecological understanding. Muir’s writings on Yosemite, for example, were not simply descriptions of mountains, forests, waterfalls and glaciers. He sought to convey what these landscapes awakened within him and why they mattered enough to be protected.
This research turns that perspective around. Muir searched for the meaning of places; I searched for the places that had meaning for Muir. Through extensive archival and field research, I retraced approximately 2500 miles of his Indian journey, visiting and documenting places associated with his travels. The research asks not only “Where did Muir go?” but, more importantly, “What did these places mean to him, and what meaning can they hold for us today?”
A railway station, a hotel room, a river crossed by boat, a stand of Deodar trees or hours spent waiting for a clear view of the mighty Kanchenjunga may seem like ordinary experiences to a contemporary traveller. Yet discovering that John Muir stood at that very place in 1903 can transform our perception of it, revealing forgotten layers of history, memory and meaning. A familiar landscape suddenly acquires a deeper presence through the knowledge of who once experienced it. This leads to a central question: Can retracing an old journey restore a forgotten sense of place?
My own journey began much earlier, as a young explorer crossing Himalayan passes with a simple curiosity: What lies beyond the mountain in front of me? Decades later, that same curiosity took me on another journey—not across mountains, but across time. The search for Muir’s Indian landscapes ultimately became the foundation of my book, John Muir Trail India.
This presentation argues that retracing historic journeys can do more than reconstruct the past. It can reconnect people with landscapes, revive forgotten stories, deepen cultural and ecological understanding and inspire a renewed sense of place and conservation.
For many years, I have jogged along the heritage railway line of the Kalka–Shimla route, admiring magnificent Deodar trees, which was opened just three weeks after John Muir’s visit to Shimla, then Summer Capital of British India. Had Muir arrived in Shimla three weeks later, on or after 9 November 1903, he might have reached Simla more comfortably, instead experiencing a Tonga journey drawn by strong horses.
But after reading Muir’s writings, discovering his deep appreciation of Deodars, and learning that he himself had planted a Deodar outside his home, I began to see these trees differently. They were no longer simply beautiful Himalayan trees; Through Muir’s eyes, they had acquired another layer of history, memory and meaning.
This is the power of a sense of place for me: a familiar landscape can suddenly become deeply personal when we discover the story of someone who stood there before us.
At another stage of our research, my co-researcher and I were searching for the traces of the shop from which John Muir may have purchased his last postcards on Indian soil in Bombay (now Mumbai). When we finally located the street and walked along it, just in front of the Esplanade Hotel, where Muir had stayed, the experience was extraordinary. For a moment, it felt as though Muir was walking only a few steps ahead of us.
That sensation of place and presence accompanied us throughout the journey. We seemed to move constantly between the past and the present, visiting places that had once been part of Muir’s Indian experience, for example, the 250-year-old Great Banyan Tree, historic Grand Hotels where he stayed, botanical gardens, the Taj Mahal, the British Residency in Lucknow and the ancient Ghats of Benaras. Each place gradually established a tangible connection with Muir. In the background of our journey were the letters he had written to his family from India and the journals in which he recorded his observations about the Indian families travelling with him on trains, the people he encountered along the way, his fascination with botanical gardens and the vegetation he identified while looking through the window of a moving train.
These personal observations encouraged me to go beyond simply reconstructing Muir’s itinerary. They led me to ask a deeper question: What was Muir actually seeing, feeling and understanding when he encountered these landscapes?
This question has opened another direction for my future research, which I have called “Ecological Spiritualism” and to which I have devoted a complete chapter in the present book. It explores the possibility that our relationship with a landscape extends beyond geographical knowledge or natural history. Places accumulate memories, emotions, human experiences and ecological meanings. When we retrace the footsteps of someone who once found profound meaning in a landscape, the place itself can begin to reveal another dimension.
Perhaps this is what I mean by a sense of place—not simply knowing where a place is, but understanding why it mattered to someone who stood there before us, and how we interpret and experience that meaning today.
